


Elements that Bind

by chiiyo86



Category: Nowhere Boys (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Elemental Magic, Friendship, Gen, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-26 22:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 55,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15672522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: The boys have made it home and hope that things will go back to normal, but normal doesn't appear to be in the cards for them anymore. Students at school look at them with suspicion, their parents are overbearing, and between their elemental powers and the way the talisman seems to have bonded them in new and interesting ways, magic is still very much a part of their lives. When their powers start to turn against them, they can only rely on each other to handle it. AU for season 2.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As stated in the summary, this is an AU that doesn't take season 2 into account, although some events will echo the events of season 2 - among other changes, Alice hasn't come back with the boys. This is totally self-indulgent but hopefully enjoyable.

The four of them stood shoulder to shoulder, looking with apprehension at the familiar blue and red entrance to the school.

“Look, it’s just school, right?” Andy said, trying to sound upbeat. “We’re in known territory. It’s not like at the press conference.”

“Where they were implying that our disappearance was a hoax,” Jake said darkly. “You can bet that some people at school are going to think the same thing.”

“How bad can it be?” Sam said. “We’re, like, celebrities now! Practically rock stars. I say let’s enjoy it a little. We deserve it after everything.”

“I don’t know how enjoyable our newly acquired fame is going to be,” Felix said, jerking his chin at a cluster of students who were sneaking glances in their direction, obviously talking about them. “Well, no need to stall any longer. Let’s do this.”

They walked toward the entrance, naturally falling into step with each other. Murmurs and looks followed them along the way, making the back of Andy’s neck tingle. Before they could get inside Mr. Bates came up at them, smiling broadly. 

“Boys! Back to school already?”

“Hello, Mr. Bates,” they chorused with varied levels of enthusiasm.

“You don’t have to look so worried. Everyone is glad to have you back.”

Jake was scowling, but Andy saw real concern behind their teacher’s smile. From what he’d heard from his friends’ parents and his own, it sounded like the man had been genuinely distraught at their disappearance and invested in finding them. Of course, the way he was looking a little more intently at Jake than at the rest of them might have something to do with him being interested in his mum. 

“Thanks, sir,” Andy said. “We’re glad to be back.”

“I’ll let you get to class, then. But if you need anything—”

“Thanks, Mr. Bates,” Jakes interrupted him. “We need to go. We wouldn’t want to be late on our first day.”

Then he stalked away, leaving Andy and the others to catch up with him.

“So smooth,” Felix murmured to Jake with the hint of a smirk. 

“Shut up, or I’ll make you,” Jake growled.

Andy, Felix and Sam exchanged amused looks over his head but refrained from teasing him further. They didn’t need another freak earthquake like the one Jake had caused at the press conference.

As they walked up the hallway to get to their respective classes the other students parted in front of them. Sam strolled a little ahead, accepting it as his due, but Andy was getting uncomfortable. The looks they were getting weren’t just curious, or pitying for what they’d been through. A lot of them seemed almost… mocking. Andy even caught some people overtly chuckling at them. Eventually Sam’s advance through the crowd was stopped by a small group of footy players, with Trent Long standing at its centre. 

“Hey, Jake,” Trent said, dismissing Sam who was standing right in front of him.

“Trent, man,” Sam said, not one for being ignored. “How’s it going?”

“Hey, Trent,” Jake said, but he didn’t look very happy.

Andy looked anxiously from him to the footy players, Jake’s teammates—his _friends_. For the first time it hit him that they were back to normal and that former rules applied again. In the other universe, they’d been a small unit of four thrown into a world that had no room for them. In this world, _their_ world, they had no particular need for each other. Jake and Sam didn’t belong to the same crowd as Andy and Felix, who hadn’t been in each other’s social circle either. Not that Andy had really had anything that could be termed as a social circle, and Felix only had Ellen. His stomach churning, Andy watched the exchange between Trent and Jake.

“What’re you doing with those losers?” Trent said to Jake, not even bothering looking at Andy or Felix as he said it. He was smiling, but there was a strain to his expression.

“They’re not losers,” Jake said tightly. “They’re my friends. And if you want to keep being my friend too you won’t call them names ever again.”

Trent’s smiled dropped. “Your friends, huh? Those two weeks in the woods got your brains all scrambled.”

“On the contrary,” Jake said. “I think I see things more clearly than ever before.”

Jake and Trent locked eyes, both of their expressions thunderous. The rest of the players squared their shoulders, standing by Trent’s side like his own personal guard. The conversation had drawn everyone’s attention and Andy realized that they were now standing in the middle of a circle of onlookers that watched them with intent curiosity.

“Look, guys,” Sam said, stepping between Jake and his teammates with confidence. He sprawled a hand over Jake’s chest but stopped short of touching Trent. “There’s no need to get excited. Andy and Felix are our friends now, but that doesn’t mean—”

Trent’s features twisted in disgust. “You too, Sam? Well, you’ve made your choice. You two have fun with the freak and the nerd.”

The boys shoved past Jake and Andy thought he heard one of them say something like, “You’ll regret it.”

Around them the crowd was disbanding with an air of regret that nothing more exciting had happened. 

“Well, that was fun,” Felix drawled. “Still feeling like a rock star, Sam?”

Sam looked earnestly perturbed. “What got into them?” he asked. “What just happened?”

“You and I tumbled down the social ladder, is what happened,” Jake said ferociously.

“You’re now down there in the muck with us freak and nerd,” Felix said, but his expression wasn’t without sympathy.

“We should go to class,” Andy said, looking around hesitantly in case another ambush was awaiting them. “See you guys later?”

They looked at each other uncertainly. None of them had their first period together, and Andy could feel his own reluctance in the others at the idea of separating. It was one thing to face everyone’s scrutiny together, and another thing to deal with it alone. 

“See you losers later,” Jake said with a smile, bumping a fist against Andy’s shoulder.

Sam and Felix waved at him and then left, and Andy found himself alone and feeling oddly vulnerable. They were back home, he told himself. No restoring demon would be after them here. They were safe. By the time he got to his Mathematics class, he still hadn’t managed to fully convince himself of it.

\---

“Hey,” Felix said, plopping down on the chair next to Ellen.

She didn’t answer him and made a point of keeping her eyes fixed on their English teacher, Mrs. Williams. Felix contained a sigh; he’d hoped that his miraculous reappearance would buy him enough good will that she wouldn’t be angry with him, but it looked like he was out of luck. 

“Sorry for not walking to school with you,” he said. “Mum insisted on driving me. I think she was worried I’d vanish again on the way here.”

Ellen flinched a little at his last sentence and Felix cursed himself for putting his foot in his mouth. It still seemed extravagant to him that people had been so worried when he went missing.

“Ever heard of a phone?” Ellen said harshly, probably to cover for her reaction.

“Uh, yes.” Two weeks without a phone and he’d apparently forgotten it could be used to contact people. “Sorry. I still feel a little—” Out of place, he wanted to say, but she wouldn’t understand what he meant. “Still getting used to being back.”

He could see it the second Ellen was mollified, a lot quicker than it would usually have been. She condescended to turning her face toward him and lowered her voice to a murmur, “What happened to you out there?”

“I—” 

He’d anticipated the question, of course; past the initial excitement of him being back, he knew that Ellen wouldn’t be able to curb her curiosity. And it wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell her the truth, but he needed to think about how exactly he would explain everything that had happened, from his initial spell, to the alternate universe they’d been thrown into, and to their new powers. Ellen was about as open to the idea of magic as Andy had been, and Felix wanted to be sure of what their elemental powers meant and how to control them before he attempted to convince her he hadn’t gone insane.

“Not here,” he said, casting a meaningful glance at Mrs. Williams. “Not now. Later, I’ll tell you everything. It’s a lot.”

“Felix, Ellen,” Mrs. William said with a long-suffering sigh. “You’ll have all the time you need to chat later.”

“Yeah,” Felix said. “Sorry.”

As soon as the teacher stopped looking at them, Ellen turned to Felix and mouthed, “ _Later_.” Felix swallowed hard. 

She tried to get him to talk after class, and to avoid the awkwardness of having that conversation in the middle of a crowded hallway Felix had to resort to the most shameful escape. “Sorry,” he said. He knew he was handling this all wrong; Ellen could be merciless and he was marking himself for the hunt by acting so shifty. “Got a thing. Talk to you later.”

“A thing,” he heard her repeat as he was already walking away. “What _thing_?”

He hid out in the library for a while, scribbling in his diary and looking at spells. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just trying to calm himself down. They were back home and yet everything was different in a way he wasn’t sure how to deal with. Magic was nebulous and _had_ screwed him over, big time, but remembering the power that surged through him when he cast a spell still made him feel a bit more centred. Then he went to find Jake as he walked out of his Economics class, and it was really a sign that there was something wrong with his current world that being with Ellen made him nervous while Jake’s presence had an immediate relaxing effect on him. He felt his shoulders droop like an invisible weight had fallen off them.

“Hey,” he said. Jake looked up at him with no surprise, as though he’d expected him. “How’s it going so far?”

“I’m tired of everyone whispering behind my back,” Jake said. “Other than that, you know. It’s class. What about you?”

“Ellen wants to talk about… what happened in the forest.”

“Oh. What’re you going to tell her?”

“The truth, eventually. But she’s going to need a lot of convincing, so I have to build up my case. I want to learn how to control—” Felix opened his hand palm up and wriggled his fingers. “—this thing. Then I can show her.”

“Yeah,” Jake said, staring at Felix’s hand like he was afraid a flame would pop up. Which, to be honest, was a real concern these days. “I guess we have to work on that.”

“Let’s find the others and then we can talk about it.” Felix cast a quick look around to see if anything was listening to them. Some people were watching them with idle curiosity, but no one was within earshot. “Somewhere less public.”

\---

Jake’s morning had been a pain, but this was to be expected. Sam may have been able to delude himself into thinking that they would just go back to the way things were, but Jake wasn’t as obliviously optimistic.

As he and Felix crossed the courtyard Jake caught a shadow moving at the corner of his eyes and he reacted on instinct, catching it before it could hit Felix. He turned the object in his hands and saw that it was only a football. His heart still racing from the rush of adrenaline he looked around, fury bubbling in his chest. He didn’t have to look very far before he saw Trent and a couple of other guys from the team snigger at him.

“Looks like you losers can’t aim for shit!” he shouted, and then threw the ball as hard as he could. His irritation doubled when Trent successfully made the catch. 

“Let’s go,” Jake said through gritted teeth, tugging at Felix’s sleeve and turning around. “They’re just a bunch of dipsticks.”

“Wow, Jake, you do really have it bad for the freak, don’t you?” Trent yelled. “What did you do for two weeks in the woods? Bet you—” The rest of his sentence was lost in the general hubbub of the school, not that Jake had any trouble imagining what it’d been.

He waited until they’d put a good distance between them and Trent and the others before he let go of Felix and stopped, forcing himself to unclench his jaw before he started to make the earth shake. 

“Thanks, mate,” Felix said quietly. “Hope it won’t make practice too awkward.”

Jake snorted. “It was already going to be awkward.” He saw that Felix was looking at him with an oddly thoughtful expression on his face. “What?”

“Nothing, just—I was thinking that only a couple weeks ago, _you_ were throwing footballs at me too. How things have changed.”

“Sometimes it feels like I’m a completely different person from two weeks ago.” Jake hesitated before going on, “Listen, I—I know I’ve said it before, but I’m really sorry for how I—”

“Bullied me? Called me names? Egged my house?”

“Yeah, all that,” Jake said, flushing. “I don’t really know why I did those things. Guess it made me feel me better about—other stuff. Not that it’s really any excuse, but—”

Felix eyed him for a beat or two, before shaking his head. “It’s fine, Jake. It’s not like I’m wholly irreproachable myself. Because of what I did, you guys’ lives have been completely turned around.” He looked away, staring in the distance at something only he could see. “But I’ll make it up to you. I’ll keep us safe.”

“Just curious, but… How long had you been planning this? The spell, I mean.”

“For months. I had to find people who had potential for magic and then figure out what their elements were so I could have one stand-in for each element. You three were just the best candidates. So I observed you for a while, changed the groups behind Bates’ back so we could be together for the bushwalk, and, well, the rest is history.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying that you _stalked_ us?” Jake said, half-laughing. Felix gave him an awkward shrug. “Wow. I’m not sure if I’m impressed by your dedication or super creeped out.”

“Maybe some unholy mix of both?”

“Unholy yourself,” Jake said, giving Felix a shove.

“I’ll take it as a compliment,” Felix replied with a smile.

They met with Andy, who lit up like a neon light when he saw them, and they found themselves a secluded patch of grass under a tree. When asked about his morning, Andy prattled at length about some point from his Maths lesson that Jake immediately tuned out.

“Any—elemental mishap to report?” Felix asked.

Jake shrugged. “You would’ve felt it if I had.”

“I had an awkward moment at the water fountain,” Andy said. “Fortunately, I don’t think anyone saw that. Sometimes it feels like it’s not so much that I’m controlling water but rather that water _likes_ me. It—tries to follow me around. It’s annoying.”

“Aww, like a stray dog. It’s almost cute,” Jake said, snorting a laugh. He laughed harder when Andy threw him a dirty look.

“Sam’s coming, so when he’s here we can start talking about practising,” Felix said.

“You make it sound like we’re the X-Men,” Jake said. 

“That’s not so far off the mark, actually. We need to get a grip on those elemental powers. You can’t keep causing earthquakes whenever you get upset. Andy wants water to stop following him.” 

Felix looked like he was containing a smile, and Andy glared at him. “I guess you have yours pretty much under control,” he said, a jealous edge to his voice.

“Well, I.” Felix squirmed and Jake started to smile.

“What happened, Felix?” he said teasingly. “Did your magic get out of hand?”

Felix narrowed his eyes at him. “No,” he said, dragging the word a little too long to be honest.

“Come on, we know you’re lying. Spit it out!”

“Tell us, Felix,” Andy said.

“I just—burned a few things. While I was experimenting in my room. It’s—you know, Jake, how your power seems only to work when you’re emotional? For me, it’s kind of the contrary. It works best when I’m calm. If I’m not, then either it fizzles out, or…” Felix mimed flames going off with his hands and said, “ _Whoosshh._ ”

“Fire,” Andy said in a breath. “It’s interesting that our powers appear to be manifesting in entirely different ways. The downside is that it means we can’t help each other out with control. We—Hey, Sam.”

Jake moved so Sam could sit next to him and Sam dropped on the grass in an uncharacteristically graceless way. “Hey, guys,” he said listlessly. 

“What’s wrong?” Andy asked.

“Everything sucks,” Sam declared.

\---

It was ironic, really. When they were in the alternate universe, all he’d wanted was to go back home. Now he was home and he felt like he’d stepped into yet another alternate reality. He didn’t get people; their story of getting lost in the woods and living off the land for two weeks should have made them heroes. Instead all Sam got were snide looks and people giving him a wide berth. Okay, that wasn’t totally true; some people had come up to him and told him how awesome it was that he’d survived out there for two weeks, but they weren’t the overwhelming majority he’d expected.

It was the fault of that stupid press conference for planting the seed of doubt in people’s minds. Surviving in the woods was cool, but pretending to go missing and making their families worry for nothing totally wouldn’t be. And, well, Sam was also coming to the realization that his sudden drop of popularity had something to do with becoming friends with Felix and Andy. Which sucked, because while he’d never considered turning his back on them once they were back, he’d sort of hoped that everyone could cohabit peacefully. Now he was forced to make a choice. No, that wasn’t exactly it—he’d _already_ made his choice, and he was trying really hard not to regret it. He kind of hated the part of himself that whispered how much easier it would be if he denied friendship with Andy and Felix. It was a very small part, but it kept nagging him.

To cheer himself up he went looking for Mia. He hadn’t seen her since the day of his return and was slightly nonplussed that she hadn’t texted him or tried to call him. He hadn’t either, but it had been an overwhelming few days. He was glad to be with his family again—and have _Sammy_ be written out of existence—but after two days it had got a bit too much. For that reason alone, he was happy to be at school.

Back when things were normal, Mia and he had would meet at every break. With the way everything had been turned around, Sam almost wasn’t surprised that he had to actively seek her out. Fortunately, he remembered her timetable and caught her as she was leaving her classroom.

“Hey, Mia.”

She smiled at him, and just like that everything else that was wrong simply ceased to matter. “Sam,” she said. He stepped up to her and took her hand, but she didn’t move closer to kiss him. “Do you have a moment? I wanted to talk to you.”

“Yeah,” he said, her words jogging a memory. “I remember you said that before.”

“Can we—” She looked around and dragged him in the space next to a row of lockers. “It’s not exactly private, but better.”

“Before you say anything, I just had something to tell you. When I was—you know, _away_ , I realized that I haven’t been the best boyfriend to you. I’ve been selfish, and—kind of an insensitive jerk, I guess, sometimes, and you deserve better. I want to be better for you. So here I am, new and improved Sam. What did you want to tell me?”

She was watching him, and he wasn’t sure how to interpret the look on her face but it was making him his stomach flip-flop, and not in a good way. Maybe it was the lack of a smile—Mia was pretty much always smiling, so it looked wrong. Too much like the way she’d looked at him in the other world, when she didn’t know him and thought he was some sort of awkward stalker. 

“I appreciate that,” she said slowly. “Can you tell me what really happened when you were lost, then?”

“I already told you,” Sam said, perplexed.

“The alternate universe, right. Me and Ellen being best friends.”

“Yeah, I was surprised at that too.”

Mia licked her lips, her eyes dropping for a moment before she looked straight back at him. “Listen, Sam. I want to believe in the new and improved you, I really do. But I can’t do it unless you’re ready to tell me the truth.”

She walked off, and a big part of Sam—way bigger than the one that wanted to deny Andy and Felix—yearned to go after her. But her back was straight and rigid, and a little voice at the back of Sam’s mind told him that she wouldn’t receive anything he’d say well at the moment. He whirled around, unwilling to keep watching her walk away, and he jumped when a door slammed shut. Had he done this or had someone left a window open? A few other students had startled but they all seemed to dismiss the incident easily. Sam shrugged and went back to the guys, letting his feet lead the way until he found them outside, enjoying the shade under a tree.

“Everything sucks,” he told them.

Jack patted him on the shoulder. “Mia, huh?”

“She doesn’t believe me about the alternate universe! And she—I don’t know—I think maybe she wants—to break up with me.” There, he’d said it. It didn’t make him feel any better.

“That’s rough, mate,” Jake said.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Andy said.

Felix didn’t say anything. He had an odd, intense look on his face, although that was pretty much just regular Felix. Still, something made Sam ask, “What is it?”

“Did you guys notice something really strange?” Felix asked.

“Er, alternate universe?” Jake said.

“Elemental powers?” Andy said.

“Everyone hating us?” Sam said bitterly. “Okay, maybe not everyone. Just, like, 98% of the school.”

“Welcome to my world,” Felix said with a sardonic smile. “But, no, I meant… Sam, how did you know where to find us?”

“I walked until I found you?” Sam said with a shrug. 

“How did any of us find each other?” Felix insisted. “We didn’t decide on where or when to meet up. We just… drifted back together.”

“It’s not that big of a school,” Jake said. 

“You, Jake, were in Economics. Sam is coming out of English class on the third floor. How do I know that?”

“Because you’re a stalker?” Jake said.

Felix coloured a little. “I didn’t memorise your timetables. Where was I before I joined you, Jake?”

“The library,” Sam, Andy and Jake said together. Then they shared a disturbed look.

“See?” Felix said triumphantly. “We just _knew_ each other’s locations.” 

He tugged at the leather chord around his neck, dropping the talisman in his palm with the reverence he always showed when handling it.

“We knew that this only protects us when we’re together,” he said, “but maybe now it’s doing a little more than that. Maybe it’s bonded us, somehow.”

“What do you mean, bonded?” Sam asked. His eyes widened at a sudden thought. “Can you read my _mind_?”

“Let me see,” Felix said. “You were thinking about Mia.”

“How did you—”

“Relax, Sam,” Jake said. “Felix is just pulling your leg. None of us can read your mind.”

“We haven’t started being telepathic—thank God for that—but I wonder what else this bond involves,” Andy said with a thoughtful frown. “And what would happen if we destroyed the talisman?”

Felix’s fingers closed protectively around the object. “We’re _not_ destroying it.”

“But do we really still need it?” Jake asked. “We’re home, now. We’re unlikely to get attacked by demons.”

“First, we don’t know that. With our new powers, who knows what can happen. Second—as Andy said, we don’t know what this bond involves and what effect breaking it would have on us. Which brings me to the thing I wanted us to discuss: we need to get the hang out of our new powers, and to do that we need to practice. It’d be safer to do it together than separately. Let’s meet up after school.”

“I’m supposed to go straight home after school,” Sam said. “My parents are still kind of freaked out.”

“Same for me,” Jake said. “Although my mum will be at work, so.”

“My parents want me home too,” Andy said with an apologetic grimace.

“Well,” Felix said, “I guess we’ll just have to find a way around it, won’t we?”

\---

“Felix, I have a few errands to run. I’ll be gone for an hour or two.”

Felix looked up from his guitar, which he’d been idly strumming as he thought of how he was going to escape parental surveillance. He tried not to look too excited by the chance that his mother was serving him on a silver tray. Since his dad was working late, Oscar would be the only one in the house and he was guaranteed to cover for Felix.

“Okay,” he said when it looked like his mum was waiting for him to say something. “See you later, then.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No, I’m fine.”

She was still standing awkwardly in the doorway. “All right, then.” She turned around to leave, then stopped, one hand on the doorframe. “Don’t go and wander off while I’m gone. Okay? Stay here. I’ll be back soon.”

Felix mustered a smile. “Sure, mum.”

She smiled too, an expression that was part amazement and part uncertainty and that she’d been wearing since he’d come back. Felix felt himself grow uncomfortable under the scrutiny; he hadn’t been the focus of that much attention from his mother in a very long time, and it made him feel a mix of emotions: there was a dangerous thrill to it, but it was awkward too, and he couldn’t help but wonder how long this would last.

“I’ll be all right,” he told her. “You can take your eyes off me for an hour or so; I’m not going anywhere.”

Lies, lies, all lies; he’d become so good at them. Guilt twisted his stomach when she nodded, looking reassured, and walked out. He waited until he’d heard the car in the driveway before he grabbed his bag and darted off. He backtracked immediately, thinking that he should at least giving Oscar a word of warning, and went into the house. He found his brother watching TV in the living room.

“Hey, Oskie,” he said. “I have to go for a couple of hours. If I’m still gone by the time mum comes back, can you make sure she doesn’t go check on me?”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m meeting up with the guys to practice our—you know.” Since Oscar had managed to draw a whole comics of their adventures through some mysterious prescient ability, it hadn’t been difficult for Felix to tell him everything—well, almost everything. He hadn’t had the heart to talk about the fact that the other Oscar had been able to walk. “We’re going to a shack in the forest. It was our hideout for a while in the other world.”

Oscar perked up. “Can I come with you?”

“Oscar… Mum will notice that you’re missing.”

“Because she won’t notice that _you_ are?” Oscar challenged. “Which one of us has vanished for two weeks, again?”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Having her back off from you a little.”

“It’s kind of nice to have some room to breathe, yeah. What I didn’t enjoy, though, was my big brother going missing in the forest for two freaking weeks. And now I’m not enjoying that said brother is trying to ditch me.”

Felix gave his brother a narrow-eyed look. “Emotional blackmail, I see. Very elegant of you.” He sighed. “You know me too well. Let’s go, then. If Mum freaks out, I’ll tell her it’s my fault.”

Felix knew before they were even at the hideout that Jake and Andy had preceded them there, but that Sam was still on his way. It was weird, the way this new tracking ability of his worked. It bore little resemblance with actual tracking, in fact; he didn’t have a map in his mind with bleeping lights indicating the locations of his friends. It was more akin to knowing where his hands and feet were without having to look, which disturbed him deeply every time he thought about it too much. 

“Hey, Oscar,” Jake said from where he was sitting cross-legged on the grass. 

“Hey,” Oscar said, looking a little startled at Jake’s easy familiarity.

“Your mum agreed to let you take your brother with you?” Andy said sceptically. 

“My mum didn’t agree to anything,” Felix said. “Hopefully we’ll be back before she is and she won’t notice anything. Did you have any trouble sneaking out?”

“My parents think I’m locked in my room doing my homework,” said Andy, “and they know better than to bother me. We have a good three hours before they start thinking something might be wrong.”

“Nerd,” Jake said, amused. He looked away, toward the forest. “Sam, finally!”

Sam emerged out of the trees a moment later. Oscar frowned at Jake, looking back and forth between Sam and him.

“How did you know he was here?” he asked. “I didn’t hear him coming.”

“Ask your brother,” Jake said.

“Magic,” Felix said, smiling down at Oscar. “Part of our new superpoweredness, or so it looks. Trouble on the parental front, Sam?”

“I had to ask Vince to cover for me,” Sam said with a grimace. “It’s going to cost me.”

“What does your brother think you’re doing?” Andy asked. 

“Seeing Mia,” Sam said gloomily. 

There was nothing to reply to that, so Felix decided to focus on the task at hand. “Okay, so I’ve been thinking about what Andy said earlier, about our powers manifesting differently. It means that we have to focus on different things: Jake has to work on using his power even when he’s not angry; Sam needs to be able to use it on purpose and not just when he’s distracted; and Andy… Andy has to make water back down a little. It likes him a bit too much.”

They all sniggered and Andy crossed his arms on his chest, looking irritated. “Thanks, _friends_. How do you propose we do that, Felix?”

“Let’s take it one problem at a time. Jake, you go first.”

“Great,” Jake murmured, but he hauled himself up anyway.

“Your power manifests when you’re angry, right? So here is my suggestion: we make you angry, and when you feel you’ve got it, you gradually calm down without letting go of your power.”

“Oh, that part is fun,” Sam said, looking a little cheered up. “Let me handle it. All right, Jake, are you ready?”

Jake looked at him mistrustfully, then glanced back at Felix. “If I agree to this, can I punch him afterward?”

“That’s definitely negotiable,” Felix said. He wheeled Oscar back, telling his brother in a lower voice, “Better if we put a little distance between us and him.”

“So, Jake,” Sam said with a suspicious amount of glee. “How’s it going between your mum and Mr. Bates?”

“You need to change your tune,” Jake said, but he’d clenched his fists.

“Not so long as it keeps working! I’m wondering, though: if your mum and Bates married—hypothetically—would you have to start calling him Dad?”

“That’s just stupid! I already have a dad.”

Felix could feel a tremor run under his feet. “Excellent. Keep going, Sam!”

“Is it really Jake doing this?” Oscar whispered to him.

“Yep.”

“You have a dad, that’s true,” Sam said, “but he’s not worth much, is he?”

“ _Sam!_ ” Andy exclaimed, horrified. “Did you really have to—"

A crack opened between Sam and Jake; it stretched out and widened until it gaped, forming a wound that cleaved the ground apart. The tremors multiplied and intensified, their rumble loud enough that Felix almost had to shout to say, “Okay, Jake, you’ve got it! Now you need to calm down!”

“That’s easy to say,” Jake said, sounding like he was grinding his teeth.

Sam had to take a stumbling step back to avoid falling into the gaping crack. “Jake, careful!”

“I’m _trying_!” Jake’s face was red from the effort, veins bulging on his temples.

“Jake,” Sam said, putting his hands forward in an appeasing gesture. “I’m sorry for what I said, dude. I shouldn’t have touched this, I—That was massively uncool of me. I’m sorry.”

His foot slipped over the edge of the crack and he flailed to keep his balance, swearing loudly. The earth stopped shaking, then, so suddenly that it was a shock. For a moment, all they could hear was the panicked cries of the birds flitting between the trees. Felix forced himself to relax his death grip on the handles of Oscar’s wheelchair.

“Wow,” Oscar said in a breath. “That was intense.”

Jake was breathing hard, Sam hovering hesitantly by his side. “I’m fine,” he said, unfurling his hands and flexing his fingers like they hurt from clenching his fists so hard. “You?”

“I’m fine too. Wanna punch me now? Uh, but not in the face, please.”

“No, I don’t want to anymore.” Jake swept a hand across his brow, looking weary. “It didn’t work,” he told Felix, his voice edged with frustration. “I couldn’t control it, or keep it going once I wasn’t angry anymore.”

“You stopped when you saw you were going to hurt Sam,” Felix said. “That’s encouraging. But it’s probably enough for tonight. We should focus on someone else.”

They each took a turn at it, with mixed results. Sam’s ability to create gusts of wind was hit or miss, and he couldn’t really control their strength. Felix tried to make Andy direct water to someone other than himself, but he still got the front of his shirt wet. The clock was ticking and Felix was preoccupied by the thought that his mum would be home soon, but his turn had come and the others weren’t going to let him skip it. 

“If I follow your train of thought,” Andy said, “we should do the reverse of what we did with Jake, right? You make fire and then we try to break your concentration.”

“Right,” Felix said. He was starting to regret bringing Oscar with him, because the need to not disappoint his little brother was making him nervous. 

“No super sensitive subjects, though,” Jake said, waving at the places where the earth had crumbled under his power. “We don’t want to set the forest on fire.”

“Okay.” Felix wiped his hands on his pants. “Okay, I’m ready.”

He cupped his hand and focused on a point at the centre of it, willing the fire to appear. In a few seconds there was a small fireball floating over it, its heat licking the sensitive skin of his palm. He didn’t dare look away from it to see his friends and brother’s reactions, but they were being unusually quiet. 

“Now, guys,” he said. Sweat was breaking across his forehead and he forced himself to breathe calmly. “Try to make me break focus.”

“How’s it going with Ellen?” Jake asked. “Have you figured out what you’re going to tell her?”

“The truth,” Felix said, not diverting his eyes from the fire. “Once I’ve got this under control.”

“Aren’t you just stalling, though?”

“What if she doesn’t believe you?” Sam said. “Mia didn’t believe me.”

“If I can show her my power, she’ll believe me.” Felix’s ball of fire had been growing steadily in size, but not in an uncontrolled way. “Same goes for Mia, by the way.”

“Oh. You think?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Jake said. “How about that time we were attacked by killer bees and you _hid_ under a desk.”

“What?” Oscar said. “What’s that about?”

“I wasn’t hiding!” The fire in his hand flared. “I was activating the talisman. I—”

“Hey, did you see that?” Sam interrupted him. 

Felix’s fire flickered and then vanished. “Damn it!” he hissed. “What the hell, Sam?”

“There was someone over there,” Sam said, pointing at the line of trees behind the shed. “You guys saw that, right?”

“Yes,” Andy said. “I think it was _Phoebe._ ”

“Phoebe?” Oscar said. “Magic shop Phoebe?”

“Yes,” Felix said absentmindedly. “In the other world, she helped us out.”

“She also stalked us for a while,” Andy said. “This was why you didn’t want us to dine at her house.”

“And,” Sam said, raising a finger, “she stalked us _here_ too. Remember, Felix? I told you that I’d seen her lurk around on the day of the excursion.”

“I remember,” Felix said. He stared out at the trees, but Phoebe must have bailed because he couldn’t see anyone. “But she helped us, eventually. There’s no reason why she should be much different in this world. Our existence, or non-existence wouldn’t affect her personality. And she might know how to help us deal with our elemental powers.”

“What’re you suggesting, then?” Jake asked. “You think we should go see her?”

“Can’t hurt,” Felix said. 

“We charmed her once, we can do it again,” Sam said with a grin.

“I don’t know that our _charm_ was the active ingredient,” Felix said, giving him a wry look. “But she might be interested in our magic, same as in the other world.”

“In the other world, she wanted us to find her sister,” Andy said. “But didn’t her sister turn into the restoring demon?”

“Other Alice did, but we don’t know what happened to the Alice of this world. Anyway, it’s worth asking Phoebe for help. Not now, though; Oscar and I got to go. Let’s try tomorrow after school.”

Felix and Oscar made it just in time before their mother was back, and the rest of the evening was blessedly normal—or at least magic-free, because his mum making his favourite food and his parents going out of their way to please him didn’t belong to any normal that Felix remembered. He vowed to enjoy it for as long as it lasted.

\---

Escaping his room through the window had been manageable, but climbing back proved considerably more challenging. Clinging to the ivy while trying to reach out for the windowsill with his other arm, Andy prayed fervently for better upper body strength. Jake or Sam surely wouldn’t be stuck like he was right now. When the window suddenly opened, Andy yelped and almost let go of the ivy. 

“Andy!” It was his sister, looking down at him with confusion, irritation and a hint of worry. “What are you doing?” she demanded to know.

“Trying not to die,” Andy said. “Would you—give me a hand?”

Viv frowned, as though considering just leaving him hanging there. After a few long, excruciating seconds she sighed and thrusted her hand out, helping Andy hoist himself into his bedroom.

“What’re doing in the inner sanctum?” he asked Viv once he felt composed enough for a conversation with his sister.

“I came to check on what _you_ were doing.” She crossed her arms, watching him with a raised eyebrow. “Or rather, what you were _not_ doing.”

“How did you know I wasn’t in here?”

“It was getting dark and there was no light filtering from under the door.”

“Amateur mistake,” Andy murmured, shaking his head at himself. 

“Are you going to tell me where you were? You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”

“No!” Andy felt himself flush, the memory of Ellen from the other world lifting her face to his coming to him unbidden. “When would I have found a girlfriend? I’ve spent two weeks in the woods. No, I was meeting with the guys.”

Viv’s brow furrowed. “The guys?”

“Yes—Felix, Jake and Sam. My—” Was there a word for what they were? Brothers-in-arms came to mind, but it would likely sound ridiculous to Viv. “My friends.”

“And you need to sneak out of the house to see them?”

“Yes, because Mum and Dad and Nai-Nai didn’t want me to go anywhere after school!”

“Of course they didn’t, because they’re worried! Do you have any idea of what it was like for us when you went missing, Andy?”

Andy opened his mouth to reply, but then closed it. It hadn’t been the same for him, because he’d seen them in the other world. Sure, they’d called him a thief, a stalker and a pervert, had threatened to call the police on him and made him work for almost nothing at the restaurant. He’d missed _being_ with them, and being acknowledged as a member of the family, but he hadn’t had any cause to worry about them. He hadn’t had to wonder whether they were dead or alive.

“I understand it was hard,” he said. “But keeping me locked up isn’t going to work out.”

“Well, I’m sure Mum and Nai-Nai are still going to give it a good try. Anyway, that doesn’t really answer my question. What was so urgent that you had to see the ‘guys’?” Viv said, rolling her eyes on the last word. “Didn’t you see them at school today?”

“Yeah, but… At school everyone is watching us all the time. It’s tiresome. We just wanted some time to hang out together in peace.”

Andy widened his eyes in his most earnest expression, the one that still worked on Viv sometimes, although less and less with the years. Eventually Viv sighed, her suspicious expression melting into resignation. 

“Fine,” she said. “I’m not going to get in the way of your amazing bromance.”

“So you won’t tell on me?”

Viv’s gaze sharpened again. “This time. Don’t count on me to cover for you all the time, okay?”

“I won’t,” Andy said, beaming at her. “Thank you, Viv.”

Viv’s lips quirked like she wanted to smile back, but she kept her expression severe and told him to get his arse down for dinner. Andy knew that this was only temporary respite, but he was grateful nonetheless that Viv had caught him out, and not his mother or his grand-mother. 

The next day at school was mostly more of the same. It was like in the other universe, when everyone had lauded him as a hero, only a lot worse. People watching his every move was still as stressful, but at least in the other universe it had been out of admiration. Here, it was like everyone was waiting for him and the others to either betray themselves or go crazy from a post-traumatic breakdown. Everyone's stares felt like they had actual weight to them and it was wearing Andy down.

After school they headed for Phoebe’s magic shop. They were still all supposed to go back straight home after school, but Andy knew he could plead the need to use the library for an assignment. He’d actually spent a lot of time at the library during the day, trying to find what he could on magic, but there wasn’t much that a school library could tell him on the subject. A visit to Phoebe’s would undoubtedly prove much more instructive. 

The shop was open and Phoebe was in it, meaning that she didn’t spend all of her time creeping on them. At the jingle from the door she raised her head, her face expressing no particular alarm when she looked them over. 

“Felix,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

Felix walked up to the counter, then glanced around the shop. “I’ve been rather busy these days,” he said.

“Who’re your friends?”

“Come on,” Jake said, “you know who we are. You were watching us yesterday!”

“You saw us,” Felix said. “You know what we can do. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

Phoebe cast a sideway look at the door, then back at them. “Not here,” she said. “Let’s go to the back.”

She went to turn the sign on her door to ‘closed’ and led them into her back shop, which looked identical to how they’d left it in the other world, dimly-lit and cluttered, the windows draped with purple curtains. The smell of incense permeated the air and it made Andy want to sneeze. 

“Brings back memories, doesn’t it?” Sam whispered to Andy, who nodded. 

Phoebe had sharp ears, because she whipped her head around and narrowed her gaze at them. “You’ve never come here before,” she said.

“Well,” Andy said.

“Not exactly,” Sam said. 

“It’s a long story,” Felix said. 

“The story of your mysterious disappearance and miraculous reappearance?” Phoebe said. “I’m all ears.”

They shared a long, four-sided look, deciding on how much they could tell her. In the end, they shared the whole story with her: a closed-faced Felix recounted in a measured voice the tale of his preparations for the Unmaking Spell, and then they took turns explaining how they’d realized that no one remembered them, found themselves harassed by a demon bent on restoring order, enrolled her as their ‘auntie,’ and eventually made it back to their world. They even added the bit about the demon looking like her sister Alice during their last show down. 

“Are you sure it was Alice?” Phoebe asked intently.

“ _You_ said it was Alice,” Felix said. “I mean, the other you. Maybe you— _she_ was mistaken, but she had no reason to lie.”

“I see,” Phoebe said, her eyes lost in the contemplation of some inner landscape.

They watched her for a moment, until it became obvious that she wasn’t going to volunteer more. 

“Sooo,” Felix said. “Have you seen elemental powers like ours before?”

Phoebe’s head jerked toward him. “Hmm? No, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never heard of anyone coming back from an alternate universe either, mind you.”

“Do you know anything that could help?” Andy asked. 

“Help with what? Are you saying you want to get rid of those powers?”

“No!” Andy and Felix exclaimed at the same time.

“Well, maybe,” Jake mumbled, but he only looked half-convinced.

“It’s just… We don’t have full control over our powers,” Felix said. “Yet.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Phoebe said dryly. “You want me to find something to help you get control?”

“If you know anything that might work,” Felix said. “Or… if you would let us have a look at Alice’s book of shadows.”

Phoebe suddenly looked wary. “I’ll look through it myself, see if I find a spell that would help you. In the meantime… Do you want tea or something?”

“Do you have something to eat?” Sam asked hopefully. Phoebe gave him a look, her right eyebrow arched. 

“He has a condition,” Andy said.

“I need to be fed regularly,” Sam said, nodding seriously.

“I can probably find some biscuits, I guess,” Phoebe said, shrugging.

She brought them some gingernut biscuits that looked homemade, and some sort of herbal tea that didn’t taste like much. Sam inhaled his share of biscuits but didn’t try to snag more from the rest of them, which Andy thought showed much character growth. They settled in the backroom, finding naturally the spots they’d occupied in the other world. Since Phoebe wouldn’t let them help her research—despite Felix’s repeated prodding—they started chatting about things of no consequence and ended up talking about their respective families’ reactions to their return. 

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad we’re back,” Sam said. “But, man, they’ve got to let me breathe, too!”

“If my mum and my grand-mother had their way, I’m sure that they would keep me in my room all day,” Andy said. His mum had actually suggested that he shouldn’t go to school for at least a week, pleading recovery from his ordeal. “They’re not going to be happy when I come back home late.”

“My parents are being suspiciously nice to me,” Felix said. 

“What’s so suspicious about it?” Jake asked.

“I mean—since Oscar’s accident—” Felix cleared his throat and twisted around toward Phoebe. “Need a hand, Phoebe?”

“I’m fine,” Phoebe said, flapping a hand at him and not looking up from her book. “Have more tea.”

Sam leaned forward and said in a whisper, “Don’t you guys think she’s being a little _too_ accommodating?”

“I can still hear you.” Phoebe snapped the book shut and rose from her seat. “I think I found something. A binding spell.”

“A binding spell?” Felix asked with a frown. “What would it bind?”

“Your powers, so they would be more manageable.”

“But how would we—well, unbind them?” Andy said. “We said we didn’t want to get rid of them.”

“The binding wouldn’t be permanent, and it wouldn’t completely cut you off from your powers. It would eventually dissolve on its own, but it would give you time to figure out how they work without risking a disaster.” 

They looked at each other. Felix seemed hesitant, Sam non-committal, but Jake was the one who put an end to their equivocations.

“I’m in,” he said. “I’ve got to stop causing earthquakes before I damage my house. Also, I want to be back home before Mum leaves for her shift, so if we could move things along quickly…”

“All right. Who will be casting the spell?” Phoebe asked, but she was looking at Felix. Andy wanted to try it, but this wasn’t the moment to mess up so he kept quiet, vowing to bring it up another time.

Instead of handing Felix the book Phoebe gave him a piece of paper on which she’d written the spell. Felix skimmed through it, a furrowed line appearing between his eyebrows.

“I don’t know, guys…” he started, but Phoebe cut him off. “You want my help or not?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on, Felix,” Jake said. “I’ve got to go home.”

“Okay,” Felix said. “We need something from each of us—”

“I’ll collect it,” Phoebe said, and proceeded to pluck a few hairs from each of their head, which she tied together. 

Andy poured water in a small silvery cup—it was similar to what they’d done before to reactivate the talisman, but Phoebe told him to use his power on the water so he focused on it until it sloshed around in the cup. She gave Jake a pinch of dirt that he sprinkled in the water; when Phoebe asked him to use his power on the dirt in the cup, same as she had asked Andy, the ground quivered briefly, almost making the table topple.

“Careful with that,” Phoebe said, and Jake glared at her.

“It’s kind of the point of this ritual,” he said.

Sam nearly blew everything over when he used air, but Felix’s flame was tiny and controlled until he drowned it in the cup. Then they joined hands without having to be prompted, the gesture now almost banal to them. Andy took Felix’s hand on one side and Sam’s on the other.

“Elements that knit the world,” Felix read from the piece of paper, “I invoke thee and bind you to my word. Earth, water, air and fire, bound and shared together by us all, access my power, surrender control.”

Felix stopped talking and there was a moment of tense silence, until Andy felt a tug on his right hand and looked in time to see Felix sway on his feet. 

“Oh, wow,” said Jake, who was on Felix’s other side. “Easy, mate.”

He grabbed Felix by the arm and Felix slumped against him, his complexion milky white.

“You okay?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” Felix answered in a thin voice.

“This must have been a really powerful spell,” Andy said to Phoebe. “He’s only ever had this reaction once.”

Phoebe’s eyes were on Felix, but Andy didn’t know how to interpret her expression. “Before I met the four of you,” she said, “Alice was the only true witch I knew.”

“Really?” Jake said as he eased Felix into one of the armchairs in the room. “That can’t be right.”

“A lot of people dabble,” Phoebe said. “And there are some benign spells that you can do even if you don’t have any real magic ability. But you boys are something else.” She blinked and rubbed a hand down her face. “This has been a long day. I seem to remember that you have homes you were eager to go back to.”

“Yeah,” Jake said, but he was looking at Felix.

“Can we wait here until Felix feels better?” Andy asked pleadingly to Phoebe.

“Unnecessary,” Felix said, pushing himself up, a little wobbly. “I’m fine.”

Jake and Andy concertedly framed him on both sides in case he had another fainting spell, but he made it on his feet without help. Once they were back in the street, Felix turned around and asked them, “Do you guys feel—I don’t know, odd?”

“What do you mean?” Andy asked. “I feel—” He trailed off, unsure of how he wanted to finish that sentence. He didn’t feel faint or sick, or anything alarming, but he was on edge for some reason, although to be honest everything about their return had been stressful.

“Are you sure you’re not just drained from the spell?” Sam asked Felix. 

“I guess that must be it,” Felix said. His face had regained some colours, but he looked tired.

“Are you going to be okay walking back home on your own?”

“Yeah, I’ll manage.”

They separated at the next crossroad, and Andy made it back home right at the point when his mum had been about to call the police.


	2. Chapter 2

Jake came back just when his mum was getting ready for work.

“Jakey, is that you?” she called when he made the screen door squeak.

“Yeah,” he said.

She emerged from her room, wearing a freshly pressed uniform, and she gave him a quick look over, like she was making sure he was in one piece. She’d been doing a lot of that, lately. It didn’t matter if the most dangerous place he went during the day was school—and, well, Phoebe’s magic shop, but Mum didn’t know that—because she always worried something would happen to him again. Even though he hadn’t meant to disappear on her, it made him feel guilty.

“I had to work. On an assignment,” he said lamely. “I have a lot to catch up on.”

He went to the fridge and got himself a yoghurt. When he closed the fridge door and turned around, his mother was looking at him. 

“What?” he asked, feeling self-conscious. 

“You’re always grabbing for something to eat, these days,” she said, looking at him with a considering expression.

“I’m a growing boy.”

“Yes—believe me, I’m aware of that. But…” She hugged herself, looking down. “How did you find food when you were out there? How often did you have to go hungry?”

Jake looked at the yoghurt in his hands like it had got there by accident. He hadn’t realized he was doing anything out of the ordinary, but it was true that their two weeks of scavenging for something to eat had left him with a better appreciation for a fridge full of food. Then he looked at his mum and all he wanted to do was reach out and smooth the unhappy lines from her face.

“Hey,” he said, putting his yoghurt on the counter and stepping up to her. “Hey, mum, it’s all right. I’m back.”

“I know.” She cupped his cheek with her hand. “I just hate thinking of you going through all this.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Jake assured her. “I wasn’t on my own. We had each other.”

Mum dropped her hand, giving him a strange look. “I’m glad,” she said. “Okay, I have to go now if I don’t want to be late. You’ll find dinner in—”

“Mum,” Jake interrupted her. “I know how to make my own dinner. Just go—we don’t want Jim to get on your case again.”

“You’re right. Have a good evening, love.”

The next day at school was rather hellish. Trent, Dylan and the rest of the team seemed to have decided that he was their #1 enemy. In the hallways they kept tripping him, shoving him and shouting insults and nasty comments about what he and the others had been up to in the woods. Practice was the worst; under the blind eye of their coach the team did all the bullying they could get away with. And they could get away with quite a lot, as Jake was realizing now—just as he had got away with a lot when he was the team’s golden star. When he went to his locker and found it filled with red, sticky earth, he was too tired to even feel angry. 

“Man,” said Sam, who’d just shown up at his shoulder. “Who the hell did that?”

“The team,” Jake said wearily. Then, glancing at Sam, “Are they giving you trouble?”

Sam shrugged. “Insults, mostly, trying to trip me up. Nothing like _this_ ,” he said, waving at the mess in Jake’s locker. The corners of some books and the tip of a sock were poking out of it. It was going to be hell trying to clean it all up.

“I guess mine is the worst betrayal,” Jake said. He caught the uncharacteristically serious look on Sam’s face and added, “You’re not thinking of turning your back on Felix and Andy, are you?”

“Of course not! I wouldn’t do that. It’s just—I don’t understand why it has to be this way.”

“Because they’re jerks, that’s why,” Jake said hotly. “And, really, we’re better off without them. We don’t need friends like that. Right, Sam?” 

“Yeah.” Jake nudged him with his elbow and Sam repeated with a little more conviction, “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. We don’t need them. Do you want help cleaning?”

“I don’t even know where to start,” Jake said, feeling discouraged. 

He looked at the dirt in his locker wishing he could snap his fingers and make it disappear. There was some irony to the fact that earth, his own element, was the thing giving him so much trouble right now. Those two thoughts bumped into each other inside Jake’s brain and suddenly he had an idea.

“You think that I could… I don’t know, move it away with my elemental power?”

“I thought your thing was making the ground shake,” Sam said.

“Maybe that’s only one aspect of my ability.”

Now excited at the possibility, Jake looked back to his locker after checking that there was no one else but him and Sam in the hallway. He held out his hand, feeling silly, and focused on the red earth. He didn’t know what he was doing at all. Every time he’d made the ground shake he hadn’t really felt like he was doing anything; the anger had been pulsating inside his chest and the earth had simply reacted to it. He’d never had the impression that he had any control over his ability. 

“Move,” he ordered the dirt in his locker. It wasn’t very impressed by his command.

“Maybe you should…” Sam said, then obviously didn’t know how to end that sentence. “Maybe we should call Felix.”

“No, I want to figure it out by myself,” Jake said, even though he’d had the exact same thought. 

He couldn’t control his power, but then he didn’t have much control over anything in his life. The only times he ever felt he was truly on top of things were when he played football, and now it was tainted by the behaviour of the rest of his team. At the thought he felt familiar anger bubble in his chest, but he forced himself to quell it. It wasn’t all bad, he told himself. The friends he’d lost were worth less than nothing, but the ones he’d gained were tried and true. Drawing strength from Sam’s presence at his back, he focused once more on the earth. He needed to get in sync with it to be able to control it; he did it unconsciously when he was angry, but he _had_ to be able to do it on purpose. 

Breathing slowly the way he did to calm his nerves before a game, Jake emptied his mind of everything but the sight and smell of the red dirt. He looked at it long enough that he could almost count every grain. When it started to move, he almost didn’t realize it until he heard Sam’s soft gasp of surprise. 

“Dude,” Sam said.

Jake instinctively closed his fist and drew it to himself; as he moved his hand the earth moved with it, until all of it had drifted out of the locker, leaving no stain behind on any of Jake’s stuff. Now it floated between Jake’s two hands, the way he’d seen Andy hold water and Felix hold fire. Gingerly he turned around to face Sam, who was staring at him.

“Jake,” Sam said, his eyes crinkling. “Man, that’s so cool.”

“Yeah?” Jake said, feeling the beginning of a smile stretch his lips. “What do I do with it, now?” Sweat was running down the side of his face. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold it.”

“Okay, okay,” Sam said, holding his hands out. “Uhhh, let’s take it outside. And hope we don’t meet anyone on the way.”

Just as he said it two people came around the corner, but Jake didn’t feel any alarm because it was only Felix and Andy. 

“Jake!” Felix exclaimed, rushing toward him. He stopped dead when he saw the floating earth between Jake’s hands. “Oh, wow. We could feel that something was happening, but—”

“Where did you get all that earth?” Andy asked.

“Prank from the footy team,” Jake said. His arms were starting to shake. “But let’s talk once I’ve got rid of this.”

There were other students outside, but Sam, Felix and Andy shielded him from sight until he’d dumped all of the earth on the grass. His legs feeling shaky, he let himself drop next to the pile. 

“How did you guys know what was going on?” he asked Felix and Andy. 

“We didn’t, not really,” Andy said. “Just that there was _something_. More of our mysterious bond, I guess. You said the team did this?”

“It’s a classic,” Felix said. “It could have been worse—at least it wasn’t dog poop.” 

Jake dropped his head, feeling ashamed. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Felix addressing him a sympathetic half-smile.

“We can get back at them, if you want,” Felix said. “Teach them a lesson.”

“What do you mean?” Andy said nervously. “I’ve never been in a fist fight. I don’t think I’d be good at it.”

“I’m not talking about fighting. The four of us don’t stand a chance against the whole team. I’m talking about _magic_. We can do magic, remember?”

“Speaking of magic,” Sam said, “the spell we did at Phoebe’s must have worked for Jake to be able to do this.”

“Probably,” Felix said noncommittally. “We’ll have to test it. So, what do you say? One little spell to get revenge on Trent and his posse?”

“I’m in,” Sam said.

“Me too,” Jake said.

“All right, then,” Andy said reluctantly. 

They discussed for a while what exactly their revenge should entail. Some of the stuff Felix suggested was a little brutal, and Jake was inclined to agree, but Andy put a damper on their blood thirst.

“We don’t want to become as bad as they are just because we have to power to do so,” he said. “With great power comes great responsibility.”

“Did you seriously just quote Spiderman at us?” Jake said, incredulous.

“This quote originally comes from Voltaire,” Andy said punctiliously.

“Say what again?” Sam said. “Who’s that?”

“He was a French philosopher from the 18th century,” Felix explained. “And I hear your point, Andy. No harm shall come to the football team.” He had a sudden smile that bared his teeth. “Other than to their pride.”

It was easy for Jake to take advantage of practice to collect hairs and various bodily secretions—sweat, snot and blood—from every member of the team. Then, he and Sam and Felix and Andy gathered in an empty classroom to cast the spell. Jake found it a little weird to be using magic for a purpose other than life or death. It was almost fun, something Jake had never associated with magic, and he could see why Felix enjoyed it. 

On Thursday, the entire football team except for Jake woke up with hot pink hair. No matter how much they washed it, the colour wouldn’t even start fading. So for the first time since their return Jake and his friends weren’t the centre of attention anymore, everyone laughing instead at the team and their strange fashion statement. 

“ _You_ ,” Trent raged when he crossed paths with Jake in the hallway. “You did this! You or that freak with you!” he added, pointing at Felix who was walking with Jake.

“Me?” Jake said, hand pressed on his chest. He glanced around to make sure he had an audience. “You’re delusional, mate. How would have I managed to do that?”

“You—” Obviously Trent hadn’t thought that far. “The soap in the showers! You added dye to it or something.”

“I always take my shower with the rest of the team. I use that soap too.”

“Yeah, precisely! How come you’re the only one not affected? That’s right, because _you_ did it!”

“Yeah, that totally makes sense. I just broke into all of your houses and tampered with your shampoos.” Giggles broke out around them and Trent’s face went as red as his hair. “If it was me, Trent—” Jake stepped closer to Trent, so it would be harder for the other students to hear what he was saying. “—you’ve got to wonder what else I could do.”

He held Trent’s eyes until all the colour had drained from the other boy’s face. Jake knew that Trent was a coward at heart; he only fought battles he was sure he could win and attacked when he knew he had back-up. The uncertainty of how Jake had managed what he’d done should keep him on his toes for a while. Trent huffed and puffed his chest, but it was only to cover for his shameful retreat.

“How long should it take for the spell to wear off?” Jake whispered to Felix.

“About a week, I think.” Felix smiled. “Or more.”

Jake laughed. “Tough luck if it does,” he said. Then, more quietly, “I think I’m going to give up the team.”

“What? But you love football!”

“Yeah, but football is a team sport and I’m not feeling the team anymore. Even if they back off, it’s never going to be the same.”

“I’m sorry,” Felix said in a subdued voice. 

Jake gave his shoulder a shove. “Hey, don’t do that. Not everything on this earth is your fault, you know. Okay, the part where we got magically sent to another universe _was_ —”

“Thanks, I’d almost forgotten about that,” Felix said dryly.

“—but _this_ isn’t. They’ve always been boneheads. It’s just that I used to be right there with them. Now that I’m not, I can’t put up with it anymore.”

“Well,” Felix said. “I’m not a footy player by any means, and I’m not ever taking up the sport, but… You know that you belong to another team, right?”

If Felix laid it on thicker, Jake might start crying. “Yeah, don’t get sentimental on me,” he said gruffly. 

No one else bothered him for the rest of the day; by the afternoon, though, not only had the giddiness from their magic prank subsided, but he was starting to feel vaguely sick. His hands and feet were numb, and his limbs felt leaden, making his every movement clumsy. 

“You look a little pale, too,” Andy told him as he examined him critically. “Have you had any poisoned pickles lately?”

“Staying away from pickles,” Jake said, struggling to match Andy’s joke with a smile. “It doesn’t feel the same, anyway.”

“Maybe you should go to the infirmary,” Andy said, eyebrows dipping down the way they did when he was worried. 

“School is almost over,” Jake said. “I’m not feeling that bad; I don’t want to throw up or anything, and I don’t hurt anywhere. I can make it through a couple of more hours.”

“If you say so.” Andy was silent for a beat. “Are you going to the party on Saturday?”

“Party, what party?” Jake grumbled, rubbing his fingers against his thigh to bring back feeling to them.

“The one organized for us, of course. Our welcome home party.”

“There’s a welcome home party organized for us?”

“Everyone at school is going.”

“Are you kidding me? We’ve been treated like shit since we’ve come back, and now they’re having a party for our return?”

Andy shrugged. “I guess no one will turn down an excuse to party. I’m not very keen on the concept, but since it’s for us I feel it would be sort of… rude not to go.”

“We’ll ask the others what they think. But I—” Jake cut himself off, because he’d just realized that Bates was now blocking his way. “Mr. Bates?” he said warily.

“Jake, I was looking for you. Oh, hello, Andy.” Andy murmured back a word of greeting, but Bates’ attention was mostly on Jake. “Any preference for dinner tonight, Jake?”

“What—dinner?” Jake said slowly.

“Oh, um.” Jake had never seen the man act embarrassed before, but it certainly looked like he was witnessing it now. Bates was fidgeting with a pen in his hands, and now Jake wanted to puke. “I invited you and your mother for a meal at my place tonight. I’m still elaborating the menu, so… Any preference? Or any allergy I should be aware of?”

 _I’m allergic to my science teacher hitting on my mum,_ Jake thought, but he said, “No, I eat pretty much anything.”

“Excellent. Well, then. I’ll see you tonight.”

Bates scampered off and Jake leaned against the wall with a groan. Why did the other world seem determined to catch up with them? He honestly wouldn’t be so surprised if he saw his dad walk around in a uniform—and at least this would be a positive change. 

Andy rested a hand on his shoulder and said gravely, “Be strong, _compadre_.”

“Yeah, thanks, Andy.”

Right after school Jake took a nap that lasted for two hours, and he woke up feeling even worse. When he thrust his legs out of the bed and tried to stand up, he had to catch himself on his nightstand because he couldn’t feel his left foot at all. The worst part of it was that he couldn’t even use this to get out of dinner at Bates.

“We won’t come home late,” his mum said. “You can go and be polite to your teacher for two hours, can’t you?”

“It’s not that I don’t _want_ to, mum,” Jake said, even though he adamantly didn’t want to. “I’m just feeling tired.”

“Please, Jakey. This is important to me.”

It was downright impossible for Jake to resist his mother when she took this tone with him, so he groaned and grumbled and went to rummage through his stuff to find himself a dress shirt. He texted the guys that he wouldn’t make it to their practice session and slept another hour before his mum made him take a shower and get dressed for dinner at Bates’.

On the list of things Jake didn’t feel he needed to know: where his science teacher lived. Or how his teacher would look wearing an apron or eyeing his mother like she was dessert. Okay, that last part was maybe a tiny bit unfair, because Bates was nothing but a perfect gentleman to his mum, but there was no way the guy’s intentions were completely pure. Jake was having multiple traumatic flashbacks from the other world. But he kept his mouth shut, because Bates managed to make his mum smile and laugh in a way she rarely did. Jake couldn’t begrudge anything that made her look happy, so he told himself to endure this dinner with as much good will as he could muster. The conversation at the table mostly flew over his head, and he was content to stay out of it. It had become hard to focus on anything other than mechanical eating, managing his cutlery with numb fingers and staying awake.

“Are you enjoying the food, Jake?” Bates asked him suddenly.

Jake was a little startled at the fact that the man remembered he existed. He looked down at the food in his plate; Bates had made lasagne, and they at least looked okay, but Jake’s sense of taste had gone numb too and he could have eaten plastic for all the difference it made to him.

“Yeah, it’s good,” he said.

“You’re being very quiet,” his mum commented, her hand cupping the back of his neck.

“Mum,” Jake complained, shaking off her hand. “I’m just tired.”

“Reacclimating to the school has been tough on you boys, huh?” Bates said.

Jake didn’t want to talk about this, but he made himself say, “It’s strange, being back. But we’ll be okay.”

“You’ve become very close to Felix, Andy and Sam.”

“Well, we’ve been through a lot together.”

His mother and Bates shared a look, and Jake had the sudden feeling that they’d talked about this together. When exactly had they talked? Were they meeting up in secret or something? He wanted to ask about it, but when he opened his mouth he felt a tickle in his throat and he had to close it before he started coughing. 

“Where’s the bathroom, please?” he asked, after he’d swallowed a few times. 

“Down the hall, first door on the left,” Bates said. 

Everything in the bathroom, from the bathtub and the sink to the tiles on the walls, was a pinkish brown colour that made Jake nauseous. He splashed his face with water then leaned against the sink, breathing shallowly through his nose. His reflection in the mirror was washed out, pale to the point that he almost looked grey. Suddenly he felt a spasm in his lungs and he couldn’t help a cough that quickly became a full-on coughing fit. He felt something clog his throat and coughed harder, trying to dislodge it. He almost choked on whatever this was but eventually spat lumps of red-tinged earth into the sink.

“What the—” he mumbled, his stomach fluttering with panic. 

This wasn’t normal. He didn’t always listen in science class, but he was quite sure that there wasn’t any medical condition that made people cough up dirt they hadn’t swallowed before. And these days, what wasn’t normal could only be explained by magic. 

“Felix,” Jake murmured. “Got to call Felix. He’ll know—”

His hand had slid to his pocket to get his phone, but then someone knocked on the door and Jake startled guiltily. He immediately got water running so he could wash the evidence of what he’d regurgitated from the sink, rubbing his knuckles over the stains a little frantically.

“Jake?” his mother called. “Jakey, are you all right, love?”

“Yeah, just a minute, please. I’m washing my hands.”

Once the sink looked reasonably clean again, Jake opened the bathroom door, plastering a smile on his face. 

“Hey,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m just—”

“You look terrible.” Mum pressed a hand against this forehead, then shook her head. “You don’t have a fever, but you feel clammy. I’m sorry,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You told me you weren’t feeling well and I didn’t listen to you.”

“It’s fine, mum. I don’t want to ruin your dinner.”

“Don’t worry about that, love. You’re more important.” She lowered her voice, maybe so Bates wouldn’t hear. “You’re _always_ more important.”

Jake’s throat closed and he hoped he wasn’t about to cough up anything weird again. “I know, mum,” he said. 

His mother went to make her excuses to Bates. “I’m sorry, Brian, but Jake isn’t feeling well and we’re going to have to call it a night.”

Jake expected his teacher to protest, but Bates actually looked concerned. “Yes, I think it might be better,” he said. “Get some rest, Jake.”

“Another time, maybe?” Jake’s mum said, the hint of a question in her voice.

“Absolutely. If you haven’t been put off by my cooking…”

“Oh, don’t try to fish for compliments, you know you’re a great cook.”

It took another minute for the two adults to stop flirting and Jake had to tune them out to preserve his sanity. Back home, he made a beeline for his bed and collapsed on it, making it whine under his sudden weight. He checked his phone and saw that he had a text from each of the guys: ‘ _Jake, are you all right?_ from Andy; ‘ _U ok dude?’_ from Sam; and a sombre, to-the-point ‘ _What’s wrong?’_ from Felix. He sent them a general, ‘ _I’m fine_ ’, too tired to deal with anything, and then he turned off his phone. He rolled to his side, still fully dressed, and fell asleep instantly. 

\---

“Something’s wrong with Jake,” was Felix’s greeting on Friday morning. 

Sam nodded, and so did Andy. They’d all felt something yesterday evening; for Sam it had been a sudden chill that wouldn’t let up, but Andy and Felix had experienced it a little differently: Andy felt it as a prickle over his skin, and Felix as a sensation of numbness. One thing they all agreed on was that it was about Jake, and even though he’d texted them that he was fine, they were still concerned by the fact that he hadn’t answered his phone since that text and that he hadn’t come to school this morning. They knew he was home through their weird magic bond, but being home didn’t mean he was okay. They hadn’t lost their persistent sense of wrongness, either. 

“Maybe he’s just sick,” Andy said. “He wasn’t feeling well yesterday.”

“If it feels like _that_ any time one of us gets sick, this bond is going to be a lot of fun,” Sam said. “Maybe we should have asked Phoebe about a spell to deal with it.”

“The spell we did the other seemed to have worked, by the way,” Andy said. “I haven’t been randomly attacked by water since then.”

“Guys, focus,” Felix told them sternly. “I don’t think Jake is just being normal sick. It feels—” 

He cut himself off, because they were having this conversation in the middle of the hallway and two pink-haired members of the footy team had just walked by, giving them the evil eye. 

“Look at them,” Sam said, sniggering. “Aren’t they pretty?”

Felix’s lips twitched like he wanted to smile. “They hate us, but what else is new? Okay, maybe we should keep talking somewhere more private.”

He strode away, leading them to one of the old classrooms at the back of the school. He looked left and right into the hallway before he closed the door behind him.

“All right,” he said, “here’s what I think: whatever is wrong with Jake is of a magical nature and we should go check on him. We’re always stronger together.”

“Well, I would have checked on him after school anyway,” Andy said.

“I don’t mean after school,” Felix said. “I mean now. Let’s go right now.”

“What, and skip class?” Andy said, and the horrified expression on his face would have been funny to Sam if he’d been less worried about Jake. 

“If Jake’s in trouble, are you going to let him down because of _classes_?” Felix asked, sounding accusatory.

“Of course not!” Andy exclaimed. “I just don’t see any evidence that he’s in any real trouble. We can’t rely on whatever we’re feeling—this is really imprecise data. He texted us that he was fine.”

“And now he’s not answering his phone.”

“If he’s sick, he’s probably sleeping and we shouldn’t bother him. What do you think happened? Why would he text that he’s fine if he’d been attacked?”

“Maybe he wasn’t the one texting.”

Andy threw up his hands. “Now you’re just being ridiculous! This is just a random, illogical assumption that rests on no—”

“Dudes,” Sam said, stepping between them. Why was it coming down to _him_ to be the peace maker? “We’re not going to help Jake by fighting with each other. Why not wait a few more hours and try calling him again? If by noon we haven’t heard from him and we still have that weird feeling, then we’ll go check on him. What do you say?”

Andy and Felix were both staring at him, looking surprised. Sam felt he should maybe get offended, but mostly he was just glad they’d stopped arguing. 

“Your suggestion makes some sense,” Andy conceded.

“I feel that this must be a sign of impending doom,” Felix said. He sighed, then looked toward Andy, hair falling in his eyes. “Sorry. I’m just worried about Jake.”

“I’m worried too,” Andy said.

“I know; I shouldn’t have implied that you weren’t. It’s just—something doesn’t feel right.”

“What has felt right, lately?”

Felix snorted. “You have a point.”

“Aww,” Sam said, beaming at them. He put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Now, you two shake hands.”

They both rolled their eyes at him and ignored his suggestion, shrugging off his hands, but at least they weren’t fighting anymore. The bell rang and they had to go to class, but Sam sent another text Jake’s way before he made it to his classroom. He got no answer. The weird chill that alerted him that something was off with Jake didn’t leave him all morning, and it made it hard to focus on his classes. 

“Sam,” his Maths teacher complained, “you’ve been back for a week, now. Surely it’s not too much to ask that you _really_ be here with us.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Sam said, but as soon as his teacher had turned his back he checked his phone.

He was on his phone again as he left his classroom, somehow hoping that if he stared at the screen for long enough, Jake would finally give him a sign of life. Who knew, maybe he could compel Jake through their bond. That would make it at least a little useful, because so far all it had done was give Sam a number of freaky sensations that he would rather have avoided.

Someone cleared their throat very pointedly and Sam tore his eyes away from his phone. Whoever he’d expected—let’s be honest, he’d hoped for Mia—it certainly wasn’t Ellen, looking at him with her arms crossed. 

“Hey, Ellen,” Sam said, vaguely perturbed by her sudden apparition. 

“Do you know where Felix is?” she asked without returning his greeting.

Sam debated with himself how to answer that question. Of course he knew where Felix was; these days, there wasn’t a moment when he _didn’t_ know. But the question was, did Felix want Ellen to know where he was? Sam wasn’t sure at what stage Felix’s grand plan to make Ellen believe him was.

“Isn’t he _your_ best friend?” he equivocated. 

A muscle jumped in Ellen’s cheek and Sam thought dimly he’d made a tactical mistake. “That’s what _I_ thought too,” she said, her tone venomous but with an undercurrent of hurt. “But since he’s come back, he’s spent more time with you and the other two nutsies than with me, so I thought you might be better informed.”

Sam was starting to feel kind of bad for Ellen, which was more than a little disconcerting. Honestly, he’d always found her pretty terrifying, even the version that wore nice dresses instead of an all-black Goth outfit. The sharpness of her tongue could draw blood. He wasn’t sure what Felix and Andy saw in her, but he also knew what it was like to be ignored by the people you rely on the most. 

“I don’t know where he is,” he said. If he tried to comfort her, she would probably gouge his eyes out. “But if I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”

She pinned him with a glare, like she was trying to make him spit out all of his secrets, then let out a put-upon sigh. “Waste of my time,” she murmured and walked away. 

“Nice talking to you too,” Sam grumbled as he watched her weave her way through the crowd of students. 

At noon he found Felix and Andy, and immediately delivered his message to Felix. “Ellen’s looking for you.”

Felix looked like he’d been about to say something, probably Jake-related, and gave Sam a startled, deer-in-the-headlights look. “Wh-what? How do you know that?”

“I saw her, and she asked me where you were. I told her I didn’t know, but man, a word of advice—don’t wait too long to get back to her. You should be able to tell her the truth now, shouldn’t you? We have our powers under control.”

“Yeah, more or less, but—”

“Maybe we should deal with Jake first,” Andy said, his tone unusually snappish. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” Felix said, shaking himself as though he needed to clear his head. “Neither of you have heard from him since earlier?” Sam and Andy both answered by the negative. “Yeah, me neither. And something still feels very, very off.”

“So we go check on him,” Sam said. “Is it all right with you, Andy?”

“Yes,” Andy said. “I made arrangements to get someone’s notes for my afternoon class.”

Felix wrinkled his brow. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to broadcast the fact that you’re planning to skip class.”

“Don’t worry. I prepared my alibi at the same time: I said I wasn’t feeling well and that I might be going home to rest.”

“Okay,” Sam said, slapping both of his friends’ shoulders. “Let’s get going, then.”

None of them had ever gone to Jake’s home, even in the other world, but they didn’t really need his address. They only had to follow the Jake-presence that was in all their heads until they reached a neighbourhood that looked pretty run-down. The houses were small, one-storey buildings, fronted by tiny yards, and the roads were cracked and potholed. When they found Jake’s house, they again didn’t have to think before sneaking around and getting to Jake’s window at the back. Through the window they could see Jake lying in his bed, awake but looking pretty sickly.

“Jake, hey!” Sam shouted through the glass, knocking on it at the same time.

“I know you’re there, Sam,” Jake said, his voice a little hoarse. “Walk around to the front, the screen door is unlocked.”

“He really did just look sick,” Sam said as they made their way back to the front of the house. “Maybe we worried for nothing.”

“No,” Felix said sombrely. “There’s something else.”

When they got to Jake’s room, he’d sat up in his bed and he welcomed them with a wan smile. “Hey, guys,” he said. “You didn’t have to come all the way here. I’m just—”

“What’s wrong?” Felix asked abruptly. 

Jake’s smile faded and he sighed. “This,” he said and flipped the covers to show them his feet.

They all leaned over the end of the bed, looking at Jake’s bare feet. It was quickly obvious that there was something wrong with the left one: the skin was an odd reddish brown and it was cracked, like when it peeled after a bad sunburn. 

“Is it—” Sam said.

“—leprosy?” Andy said with a frown.

“Ew, Andy, no,” Jake moaned, flopping back against his pillows and throwing an arm over his eyes. “You’re going to make me throw up.”

“It looks like dried clay,” Felix said.

“Yeah,” Jake said, his voice muffled by his arm. “And yesterday I started coughing up small lumps of the stuff.” He pointed at the wrinkled tissues on his nightstand that were stained with red-brown.

“And how are you feeling overall?” Andy asked. “You look awful.”

“I _feel_ awful,” Jake said. He let his arm slip back to his side. “I’m cold all the time and I just feel really tired. It’s getting harder and harder to move.”

“Is it—” Felix waved at Jake’s foot. “—progressing?”

Jake swallowed audibly. “Yeah. My feet looked normal when I went to bed yesterday. And when I woke up this morning only the toes were affected.”

Sam had to look away from Jake’s gross clay foot because it was making him a little nauseous. “What do you think is going on, Felix?”

“Could it be some sort of curse?” Andy suggested.

“I don’t know,” Felix said, rubbing his forehead. “If it’s a curse, we need to find the person who cast it and make them break it, but—This is progressing pretty fast. We may not have the time.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Jake said.

“I don’t like the _look_ of that,” Felix replied. 

“So what do we do?” Sam insisted.

“Let me _think_ ,” Felix snapped. He fished his black diary from his satchel and started leafing through it, his mouth tight at the corners.

Andy sat on the edge of Jake’s bed. “Who could have a reason to cast a curse against you, Jake? Who are your enemies?”

“I don’t have _enemies_ , what the hell,” Jake said. “Well, except for the footy team, I guess.”

“Maybe someone in the team knows magic too.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“Okay,” Felix said, snapping his book shut. “I can’t find anything useful in there, but Phoebe has more books. So we should go to Arcane Lane, and—”

“I’ll go back to school,” Andy said.

“Andy!” Felix protested.

“No, hear me out: while you go to Phoebe to find a way to reverse this, I’ll investigate on who might be responsible. If someone from the team knows magic, maybe I’ll find something in their lockers. We need to fight on all fronts if we want to save Jake.”

“All right,” Felix relented. “I’ll go to Arcane Lane with Sam and you go back to school. We text each other as soon as we find something.”

“And what do _I_ do?” Jake asked.

“You stay here,” Sam, Felix and Andy said together.

“You tell us if it gets worse,” Felix said. He flashed Jake a smile. “We’ll be as quick as possible.”

“Yeah, great,” Jake mumbled, wrapping his covers around himself in a tight cocoon and closing his eyes.

Sam, Felix and Andy split up on the pavement in front of Jake’s house. The sky was clouding over and Sam fought a sudden chill, although it was hard to tell if it had really become colder or if it was more of the weird vibe he got from Jake. Felix and he rushed to Phoebe’s shop—Felix had some freakishly long legs, and he walked like there was a house on fire—but when they got there they found the shop closed.

“Phoebe!” Sam yelled, pounding on the glass-paned door with his fist. “Open up!”

Felix joined him. “Phoebe, it’s us! We have a problem!” He jerked away from the door, uttering a muffled curse. “She’s not here. Plan B, then: the key under the pot plant.”

They entered the shop using the key, and Sam wondered how many times they’d have to do this before Phoebe decided to change where she hid her spare—until he remembered that when Jake and Andy had done it, it had been in the other world. They made their way through the shop and to the back, and Felix didn’t waste time raiding Phoebe’s bookcases. Not much about the books made sense to Sam, so he let Felix do the research and posted himself in the doorway leading to the shop, on the look-out for Phoebe’s return. For a while, the only sound in the room was the rustle of paper when Felix turned pages.

“Anything yet?” Sam asked after what felt like at least half-an-hour.

“No,” Felix said, his eyes flickering over dusty pages. “I’ll tell you when I find something.”

Sam checked his phone; no text from either Jake or Andy, which was both a good and a bad sign. “Maybe you should’ve taken Andy with you,” he said. “He’s the brainiac dude; he’d be better at this researching schtick.”

Felix looked up from the book. “And I’d be better at it if you stopped _interrupting_ me.”

“All right, all right,” Sam said, raising his hands in an appeasing gesture. 

When Felix started feverishly scribbling in his diary, Sam assumed that he’d found something, but he made himself not ask about it until Felix was putting the books back where he’d taken them. 

“So?” he asked then. “Do you know how to help Jake?”

“Maybe,” Felix said. “I have a few ideas, at least, but since we don’t know what exactly is going on, I can’t be sure it will work. Any sign from Phoebe?”

Sam looked back in direction of the entrance. “Nope. The coast is clear.”

“Excellent.”

Sam left the shop feeling pretty good about the success of their mission. Felix still looked preoccupied, but he tended to lean toward pessimism and Sam was confident that among his several ideas there must be one of them that would work. They would heal Jake, and they would settle back into their new normal with a little bit of magic on the side.

When they walked around the corner, they bumped into Ellen and Mia.

\---

Felix had vanished on her. _Again_. Even when they were together, she could feel that his mind was elsewhere. He shut down every attempt to talk of what had happened in the woods, even though he’d promised he would tell her about it, and he never had time to hang out with her after school. 

“I have so much homework to catch up on,” he would say.

“Well, I could help you with that!”

He didn’t want her help. Really, it seemed like he didn’t want to have anything to do with her, now. He’d always been a dreamer, always half-lost in his own world, but it was a world he’d offered her a peek to from time to time. She’d never felt him so remote before. 

“I don’t care,” she bit out under her breath. “I don’t need him.”

She’d always prided herself on her self-reliance; most people were either idiots or jerks, and she was better off without them. But Felix had been her best friend for years; when he’d disappeared she’d discovered what missing him felt like, and she didn’t care for the feeling. During those two hellish weeks she’d spent hours on the Internet poring over every nightmare story about people getting lost in the wild, hating nature more and more with each of them. When Felix had come back it had felt like a miracle, until she’d realized that he wasn’t really back as the boy she knew. And to add insult to injury, he appeared to have replaced her with the three morons he’d got lost with.

She was thinking again about her conversation with Sam—she was good at spotting lies and was convinced he’d lied to her face—, her jaws clenching with anger at the memory, when she almost ran into Mia. 

“Oh,” Mia said, clutching the books she was holding to her chest. “Sorry.”

“Watch where you’re going,” Ellen told her, then shoved past her.

“Wait!”

Ellen stopped in her tracks, gritting her teeth. She was in a mood, and Mia had a way of getting on her nerves even on a good day.

“What,” she said flatly, not turning around.

“I saw you talk to Sam, earlier.”

Ellen turned then, shooting her an incredulous look. “And so what? I’m not trying to hit on your boyfriend, if that’s what you’re worried about. Get over yourself.”

“No, that’s not—” Mia bit her lip, looking unsure, but then she leaned intently toward Ellen. “We haven’t talked much, lately. He’s been—strange since he came back. And, I don’t know… Have you noticed anything with Felix?”

Ellen wanted to tell Mia to fuck off, but this was so close to what she’d just been thinking that it gave her pause. Now that she thought of it, she hadn’t seen Sam and Mia suck faces even once during the week. Not that she’d missed the spectacle, but if what was wrong with Sam was the same thing that was wrong with Felix—

“I was just asking Sam if he’d seen Felix,” she said. “Those four have been living in each other’s pockets since their return. Has—has Sam talked to you about what happened to them while they were missing?”

“Yeah,” Mia said, and Ellen felt a sudden and violent spike of jealousy. “Well, no, not really. He’s told me this crazy story—”

“What crazy story?”

Mia huffed a little embarrassed laugh, half-rolling her eyes. “It’s ridiculous. He told me that he and the others were transported to some sort of alternate universe where they didn’t exist. He said that you and I were _best friends_ in it.” Ellen’s face must have betrayed her disbelief, because Mia added, “Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”

“How could he think for a second that you were going to swallow that?”

“I don’t know. Sam… he likes to brag. You should take the things he says with a grain of salt, but this is something else.” Mia shook her head. “He seems—I don’t know, more mature in some ways, but then he tells me this stuff and I don’t know what to think.”

“Felix hasn’t told me anything at all,” Ellen said. “He—Oh, _there_ he is.”

Felix was tall enough that he was easy to pick out in a crowd, and she saw him make his way down the hallway that ran perpendicular to the one where Ellen and Mia were. He stopped just as he was going to disappear out of view and was joined by Andy and Sam. The three of them huddled together, heads bowed, as though they were sharing secrets with each other.

“What are those three whispering about?” Ellen murmured. “And where’s Jake?”

“Oh, I think Jake is home sick,” Mia said. “He wasn’t in class this morning.”

Sam slapped Andy and Felix’s shoulders and the boys stepped apart, seeming to have reached a decision. They walked together out of Ellen’s field of vision.

“Let’s follow them,” Ellen said suddenly.

She started trotting up, unwilling to lose the boys, and she heard Mia thud after her.

“Ellen, wait! What’re you doing?”

“Just as I said: I want to know where they’re going.”

“But we have class!” Right at that moment the bell rang, and packs of students started to lazily move in the same direction. “They’re probably just going to class too.”

Ellen stopped to face Mia. “If they’re going to class, then we’ll go too. But I have a feeling that they’re up to something and I want to know what it is. Are you in?”

Mia hesitated, nervously fingering the split corner of her book. “Okay,” she finally said. “I want to know what’s the matter with them too.”

“Great. Now let’s hurry before we lose them.”

Fortunately Ellen was still easily able to spot Felix’s dark mop of hair over the sea of her fellow students’ heads. They had to fight their way against the flow not to lose Felix and the other two, but when she saw them walk through the main entrance Ellen felt a quick surge of vindication. They _were_ up to something; she was finally going to get some answers. 

The boys didn’t seem very concerned with being tracked; they never turned around or tried to abruptly change directions, and it was easy enough to follow them without being noticed. Mia was an anxious presence at Ellen’s side, sweeping quick glances around like she was nervous someone would ask them what they were doing out of school. 

“Where are they going?” she whispered to Ellen. 

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not sure this is such a great idea.”

“Either shut up or go back to school. It’s too late to have cold feet, now.” Mia chose to shut up.

They reached a part of town that Ellen wasn’t very familiar with, and that she hadn’t thought Felix knew either. Neither he or the other boys seemed to be looking for their way, though. They walked confidently, like they knew where they were going. After about fifteen minutes of walking they stopped at a house, but instead of going for the front door they sidled along the side and rounded the back of the house.

“What’s that place?” Mia asked. 

It was a small, but ordinary house framed by trees whose leaves licked the roof. Ellen was about to check the mailbox when she heard Sam’s voice, and she grabbed Mia’s hand and pulled her in, making her crouch with her behind a bush.

“—for nothing,” Sam was saying.

“No,” Felix said. “There’s something else.”

They pushed open the screen door at the front of the house and entered as though they had every right to be there. Once she was sure they weren’t going to double back, Ellen stood up and went to read the name on the mailbox.

“‘Sarah and Jake Riles’”, she read out loud. “This is Jake’s house.”

“Maybe they’ve just come to check on him,” Mia said. 

Ellen felt a prickle of doubt but shook her head against it. “No, that can’t be it. Why wouldn’t they wait after class, then? I know that they’ve become freakishly close since they’ve got lost in the woods together, but that just makes no sense.”

Ellen and Mia stood awkwardly on the pavement in front of the house for a few more minutes, trying to figure out what to do. Ellen felt exposed staying there, and some of Mia’s paranoia must have rubbed onto her because she felt sure that some noisy neighbour was about to come and ask them what they were doing here instead of being in school. An old car rattled by and it jolted Ellen into action.

“Okay,” she said, drawing nearer Mia to whisper in a conspiratorial tone. “If we make our way to the back, maybe we’ll be able to hear what they’re talking about.”

Mia gave her a wide-eyed look, then sighed and said, “Let’s fully commit to being stalkers, I guess,” she said.

“We’re not stalking,” Ellen said with authority. “We’re _investigating_.”

“Somehow this investigation feels very much like stalking.”

Still, when Ellen walked to the side of the house, Mia was trailing after her. _Perfect girl’s not so perfect, after all,_ Ellen thought, but she stopped herself from saying it out loud, because this wasn’t the moment to upset her temporary partner in crime. They’d almost reached the back when they heard the squeaky sound of the screen door opening, so they backtracked and flattened against the side of the house, peeking around the corner to see what was going on.

The boys separated in front of the house, Andy going one way while Felix and Sam went another. Ellen twisted around to look at Mia, who had been watching over her shoulder.

“Who are we following?” she asked, even though she knew where _she_ wanted to go.

“Sam and Felix,” Mia said without much hesitation. 

Ellen nodded at her resolutely and they detached from the house to go after the two boys. They still didn’t seem to be aware that they were being followed. Ellen noticed that Felix was acting nervous, though. Not like he was afraid of being caught out, but like there was something urgent going on. He walked in long, rapid strides and even Sam had trouble keeping up with his long legs. His shoulders were rigid with tension and he clung to the strap of his satchel like it was a lifeline. _What’s wrong, Felix? And why won’t you tell me about it?_

Again, they walked like they knew where they were going, which turned out to be the _magic shop._ Ellen and Mia hid behind a car while the boys pounded on the door, calling for ‘Phoebe’, who Ellen assumed must be the shop owner, the one everyone had nicknamed the ‘witch.’

“It’s us!” Felix was shouting. “We have a problem!”

When it looked like no one would answer, Felix went directly to the flower pot under the wind chime and retrieved something from under it—probably a spare key, since he and Sam proceeded to enter the shop without issue. As she watched them, Ellen felt an odd feeling flutter inside her chest, like a carpet had been pulled from under her and she’d lost her footing. It wasn’t seeing Felix commit petty misdemeanour that troubled her—they’d done worse together—but the way Felix had gone for that key. He hadn’t had to look for it; he’d _known_ it was there. _It’s us_ , he’d said, which spoke of a long-term association between him, his new friends and Phoebe the witch. It was like there was a whole part of her best friend’s life that she wasn’t aware of, and she hated it.

“Ellen?” Mia asked worriedly. “Ellen, are you all right?”

Ellen brushed gravel off her knees and stood up. “Let’s see if we can find a window at the back. I want to see what they’re doing.”

She didn’t wait to see if Mia was following her, but she heard Mia’s footsteps behind her. She felt angry, and hurt too, but she shoved the hurt down and clung to the anger. How long had Felix been hiding things from her? Had he and the others really been lost in the woods those two weeks? She walked around the building to the back of the shop, but when she found a window it was too high for her and she had to ask Mia to prop her up. She clung to the windowsill while Mia held her waist, and tried to get a peek inside.

“Can you see anything?” Mia asked in a strained murmur.

“Damn it, no,” Ellen cursed. “There’s a curtain.”

“I’m putting you down.”

“No, no, I’m trying to listen!”

She held her ear out, but she couldn’t hear anything. Her arms were shaking but she held on until she heard Sam’s voice, then Felix’s, but she couldn’t make out what either of them was saying. 

“Okay,” she told Mia. “Put me down.”

She let go of the windowsill and Mia helped her control her fall. She flexed her fingers, bloodless from her grip, and winced when they started to hurt as blood rushed back. She told Mia that she hadn’t heard anything interesting, and they decided to go back to their peeping spot behind the car until the boys left the shop. They stayed there almost forty minutes; at some point, a woman came for the car they used to hide and they had to scramble behind another vehicle without getting noticed. When the boys finally came out of the shop, closing it behind them, Ellen made another split-second decision and left her hiding spot to put herself in their way. 

The boys both jumped violently at her sudden apparition. “What— _Ellen? What—why—”_ Felix stuttered. 

“Mia!” Sam exclaimed, beaming like an idiot.

Mia had followed Ellen, but she gave her a cross look, which Ellen ignored. “Hello, boys,” she said, then cursed herself for not thinking of something wittier and more cutting to say.

“What’re you doing here?” Felix asked. “Wait, why aren’t you in class?”

“I don’t know, why aren’t _you_ in class?”

Felix and Sam shared a look, then Felix opened his mouth to answer but he was interrupted by two simultaneous _ting_ that signalled an incoming text. Sam and Felix both patted themselves for their phones, then looked at each other after they’d checked them. The silent communication carried by that look made something twist inside Ellen. 

“We have to go,” Felix said to Ellen. “I’m sorry, there’s no time to explain.”

He moved as though to bypass her, but she stepped to the side to stop him. “Wait a minute,” she said, anger seeping into her voice. “I don’t care how much mysterious business you have to attend to, but I’m tired of you avoiding me. Just tell me what’s going on!”

Mia, bless her, chose that moment to help. She turned to Sam, looking at him with pleading eyes. “Sam, please,” she said. “We just want the truth.”

“Mia,” Sam said, obviously swayed, but Felix elbowed him in the ribs and told him sharply, “Sam. We need to go _now_.”

And surprisingly, that seemed enough for Sam to resist Mia. “I’m sorry, Mia,” he said, sounding genuinely sorry. “We really have to go. This is important.”

Felix grabbed Sam’s arm unceremoniously and started to drag him away, but Ellen wasn’t giving up already. She caught Felix’s satchel and tugged at it, making him stop in his tracks.

“Ellen!” he protested, pulling too to make her let go. “Come on!”

“You don’t just walk away from me.” She made sure she looked him in the eye, trying to convey how serious she was. “If you do, you can forget about me. You understand that? You can kiss our friendship goodbye.”

Felix stopped tugging at his satchel, although his hands were still clasping the fabric with a white-knuckled grip. Ellen’s heart was pounding hard and a tiny part of her mind was screaming, ‘ _why did you say that?’_ but she wouldn’t back down. Felix was stubborn, but surely he wouldn’t risk their friendship. Would he?

“You don’t mean that,” he said very quietly. 

“Felix,” Sam said urgently. 

Felix tore his eyes away from Ellen to glance sideways at Sam. A man and a woman, holding hands, walked past them and cast them a strange look—they must have made an odd picture, four teenagers frozen in place, two of them stuck in a tug-of-war over a satchel. Ellen saw something shift in Felix’s expression, a new kind of resolve that smoothed all emotions from his face.

“I’m sorry, Ellen,” he said. “I can’t do this right now. If you still want to know what’s going on, come and see me tonight and I’ll tell you the whole story. But I’m leaving now.”

He gave his satchel a little tug and she dropped it, all the fight suddenly drained from her. The boys scuttled off like they had ants in their pants and soon they’d disappeared from sight.

“Don’t you want to follow them?” Mia asked.

“No.” Ellen’s eyes prickled and she blinked rapidly until the feeling passed. “Screw them.”

“Are you going to go see Felix tonight? Will you tell me what he told you?”

“I don’t know yet.” Ellen angled away from Mia, pretending to look through her bag to hide her expression. “But thank you, anyway. For coming along.”

Even though she wasn’t looking at Mia, she was sure the other girl was smiling. “No problem,” she said. “Any time.”


	3. Chapter 3

For some reason, Sam kept wanting to talk as they were hurrying back to Jake’s place.

“Wow, I had no idea that the girls were following us! How long do you think they’ve been doing that?” Then, “Did you think that Mia looked angry? Maybe I should have promised to tell her everything, too. Although, I _did_ tell her everything and she didn’t believe me.” And then, in a rare show of perceptiveness, “I’m sure Ellen didn’t mean it.”

Felix couldn’t help reacting to this. “Shut up, Sam.”

“When you tell her everything, she’ll understand. And your power is flashier than mine—it’ll be hard to deny the truth when she sees you make fire with the _power of your mind._ ”

Strangely enough, Sam’s words were starting to ease the ball of panic that had lodged itself in the middle of Felix’s chest. He wasn’t as sure as Sam that Ellen hadn’t meant it—or rather, he was fairly certain that she’d been bluffing, but if she was really angry at him then all bets were off on what she would do. An angry Ellen was capable of about anything. But he wasn’t going to let Jake get turned into clay, no matter what, so it was useless dwelling on his fight with Ellen. 

They found Jake not only looking sicker, but also scared out of his wits. His face had taken on a greyish blue tone that made him look like a corpse, and when they entered his room his head snapped at them, his eyes wide.

“It’s got so much worse,” he croaked.

Felix pushed back the covers to check; Jake was only wearing boxer shorts and a t-shirt, and his bare legs had completely turned into cracked dry clay. Jake pulled up his t-shirt to show him that the clay had started to make its way past the waistband of his shorts. 

“It’s progressing quicker than before,” Felix murmured, his fingers drumming against the satchel on his hip. “Damn it, why isn’t Andy there yet?”

Right on cue, his phone rang with a message from Andy: _Met obstacle on the way, but coming right now. No evidence of foul play._

“Andy’s on his way,” he told Jake, hoping to sound reassuring. 

Jake nodded, his Adam apple nervously bobbing up and down. “Do you have something that can help me?”

“I have—a few somethings. Just let me, let me sort them out.”

Sam sat on the edge of Jake’s bed and started telling him about running into the girls, probably trying to distract him from what was happening to him. Felix took advantage of the respite to look through the spells he’d found at Phoebe’s. He’d focused on healing spells, but dismissed all the ones that dealt with normal ailments—which was the majority of them. Even then, he wasn’t sure what to choose. A spell that healed energy, one that healed the soul? A cleansing spell? Andy had said ‘no evidence of foul play,’ which suggested that he hadn’t found anything in the footy team’s lockers—but of course that didn’t mean that no one had done this to Jake. 

Andy was almost there. Sam and Jake could feel it too because they had stopped talking and were both staring at the door in anticipation. Then Jake groaned, shutting his eyes tight. “Think, think it’s getting worse,” he said breathlessly. 

Sam yanked at Jake’s t-shirt to reveal that the entire lower part of Jake’s torso was now earth-brown.

“It’s going to be okay, man,” Sam told Jake, patting him awkwardly on the arm. His voice was an octave higher than usual. “Andy’ll be there in a minute. Felix has a plan. It’s all fine.” Jake grabbed for Sam’s hand and squeezed it, pretty hard if Sam’s wince was any indication, although he didn’t try to wriggle his hand out.

Felix didn’t really have a plan. Looking at his spells, the only thought in his head was how little he knew about magic and how much the others relied on him even though they should know better by now. When Andy burst into the room, shouting, “All right, I’m here, I’m here! What’re we doing?” a dreadful sort of calm took over Felix. No more time for tergiversations; he had to do something, and he had to do it now. 

“All right,” he said, his voice not even wavering. “We need something from Jake. I think—” He looked at Jake’s clay legs. “If we could scrape some of this clay—”

“What?” Jake exclaimed. “I don’t want to be mutilated, thank you very much!”

“It’d be no more than a scratch.”

“I have this,” Andy said, pulling out a Swiss Army knife from his pocket.

“Okay, do it, then.”

Andy approached Jake hesitantly, knife out. “Sorry,” he said, grimacing. “I’ll try not to take too much.”

“Well, I’m gonna close my eyes, if you don’t mind.” 

Jake covered his face with both hands, and Andy touched his shin with the cutting edge of the blade. “Can you feel this?”

“No.” Jake’s voice came out muffled. “Please, I don’t need a running commentary. Just get it over with.”

Andy gingerly scraped a few crumbs of Jake’s clay and deposited them in Felix’s cupped hand. Felix felt a quiver of queasiness at the idea that this was a bit of _Jake_ , but he controlled it by thinking that it wasn’t really any worse than a flake of dry skin or a clipped nail. Taking a deep breath, he looked once more over his spells. 

“Divinity of the elements, I summon thee,” he started chanting, his voice getting more confident as he spoke, “Get rid of the negative, let him be in harmony. Welcome the positive, let them stay. But make sure the negative goes away.”

He looked up to check on Jake, but he already knew that it hadn’t worked—he hadn’t felt that _zing_ of energy that generally accompanied a successful spell. And indeed, Jake’s legs were still brown and cracked, his face still deathly grey.

“Felix?” Sam asked.

“Let me try something else,” Felix said, flipping through his book. “Maybe a curse breaker.”

He’d started chanting again when Jake made awful chocking sounds. “Can’t breathe,” he complained. “Can’t—"

Andy looked under his shirt and said, “I think it may be reaching his lungs. We don’t have a lot of time!”

“Felix, do something!” Sam said. He still had his hand in Jake’s, his fingers turned white from Jake’s crushing grip. 

“I’m trying!” 

Felix finished the curse breaker spell, but it didn’t work any better than the first spell had. Jake’s eyes were rolling in panic, his breath coming out in short, agonized gasps. Broad strokes of earth-brown were creeping up his neck.

“Come on, come on,” Felix murmured, flipping through his spells, his heart beating in his throat. If only he knew what was happening to Jake! It was something magical, that was for sure, but apparently not a curse, unless it was too strong for a basic curse breaker. It must have something to do with Jake’s elemental power—What if Felix tried to combine a healing spell with the spell they’d used to ward off elemental attacks? “I have another idea!”

“Well, hurry up!” Andy said, his eyes fixed on Jake; the brown had now reached his chin and tears were spilling from Jake’s eyes.

“Divinity of the elements, I invoke thee.” Panic made Felix hurry, his words stumbling out of him, and he forced himself to slow down before he made a mistake—he was improvising, and he had no time for trial and error. “Earth, water, air, fire.” The talisman burned hot enough that it would have been uncomfortable without the barrier of his t-shirt. “I invoke ye place. Your greatest strength, your kindest grace. Heal this man’s pain, don’t let any evil remain.”

Energy zapped through him, heaved through his chest and down his limbs. He felt warm, tingling, then too hot, until something crashed over him like a wave or maybe the entire ocean. His vision blurred, and darkened, and then there was nothing. 

Felix woke up to Sam’s face, so close that it filled his entire vision field. So close, in fact, that Felix wondered if Sam had been about to give him mouth-to-mouth. He could feel carpet against the bare skin of his back where his t-shirt had bunched up.

“Felix!” Sam shouted in his face.

“Get off me,” Felix tried to say, but it came out garbled and he had to repeat himself. He sounded like he did after hours at a concert. 

“Are you okay?” Sam asked as he helped him sit up. “I was shaking you, but you wouldn’t wake up!”

Felix rubbed his face with both hands. “How long was I out?”

“Just a few minutes, but man, that was scary!”

Felix found it pretty scary himself. He always felt _something_ when he cast a spell, but the worst reactions he’d had was getting dizzy after the spell that healed their mothers and the one they’d cast at Phoebe’s the other day. He’d never outright passed out, and he wasn’t experienced enough to know if this was normal. Why had that spell affected him so badly? Why—

“Jake!” he said, everything that had led to this particular spell rushing back to him. “Is Jake all right?”

He heaved himself to his feet with Sam’s help, his head spinning madly, and saw that Andy was sitting on the edge of the bed next to a seemingly unconscious Jake. His colouring was better, although he was still pale, and there was no more brown on his neck. 

“He’s fine,” Andy said. “What about you? You gave us a scare.”

“Feeling kind of shaky,” Felix said. He sat down at the end of the bed. “So he’s really all right? The spell worked?”

Something hit him from behind and Felix almost slid off the bed, yelping in surprise. He looked around and realized that Jake had kicked him from under the covers.

“Can move my legs again,” Jake said, voice thick with exhaustion. He gave Felix a look with half-lidded eyes. “Thanks, man.”

Felix smiled at him. “I would say, ‘any time,’ expect I don’t want to repeat this experience, like, ever.”

“You and me both,” Jake said. “God, that was messed up.”

“I think I found out something a bit, um—messed up too,” Andy said. “Sam and Felix, can I just test something on you?”

“Sure,” Sam said easily, and Felix shrugged.

He hadn’t been sure what to expect, but he was surprised when Andy just pressed his fingers against Felix’s and Sam’s necks, like he was feeling for their pulses. Then he did the same to himself and to Jake.

“Just what I thought,” he said, sounding like he was talking to himself. 

“And what is that?” Felix asked. He wasn’t quite tired enough not to feel impatient with Andy’s mysteries. His head hurt now, a dull, steady throb that pulsed behind his forehead.

“Our hearts beat at the pace,” Andy said. “Exactly the same. I found out when I was checking on Jake, making sure he was all right.”

The smooth surface of Sam’s forehead rippled as he absorbed the information. “Is that weird?”

“Yeah, it _is_ ,” Andy said in that intense way he had when he was making a point. “There should be variations among the four of us. And Jake is an athlete, and I’m not, and his heart should beat slower than mine—that’s why it struck me as odd to find out that we were in sync.”

“So, wait,” Felix said, rubbing at the spot between his eyebrows; now that he felt a little more clear-minded, the pain was really starting to bother him. “What would happen if for some reason one of our heartbeats sped up? Like, from panic or something. Would the others just start quickening too?”

“An excellent question,” Andy said. “It’s hard to tell for now, because we’ve kind of have been panicking in unison, lately. Although, I’ve had a couple of weird episodes this week. I thought they were sudden anxiety attacks, but…”

“Yeah,” Felix said. “I’m asking because I’ve had them too.”

Sam shrugged. “I thought I was just getting a little too into that video game.”

“I haven’t felt anything like that,” Jake said. He hadn’t said anything in a few minutes, and Felix had thought that he was asleep or passed out again, but his eyes were wide open and he was trying to sit up. “When did it happen?”

“It was in the afternoon…” Andy frowned in concentration. “I think one time was on Tuesday.”

“When I was at practice,” Jake said. “You must have been feeling me playing football.”

“Unsettling,” Felix said.

“ _Freaky_ ,” Sam said.

“And now I have an even better question,” Andy said. “If one of our hearts stopped beating, would the others stop too?”

“Okay, now you’re officially freaking me out,” Jake said. “Do you mean that if one of us died, the others would die too?”

“Potentially,” Andy said.

“Okay, okay, everyone slow down,” Sam said, holding his hands out like someone stepping into a fight. “Why are we talking about dying? No one’s going to die!”

“After everything that’s happened to us in this world and in the other one, it’s not out of the realms of possibilities,” Andy said.

“Not helping, dude,” Sam said.

“We don’t have to figure this out now,” Felix said. It was getting too tiring to sit up, so he slid down to the floor so he could have the bed at his back. “Andy, what happened at school? You said you ran into trouble.”

“Oh yeah, Mr. Bates almost caught me out. I, um, blew up the faucet in the restroom to distract him.”

“You what?”

“I panicked, all right? He doesn’t know it’s me—how would he?—and I don’t think he recognized me. And I didn’t find anything in the team’s lockers.”

“Told you they weren’t doing magic,” Jake said.

“Not necessarily,” Felix said wearily. “It just means that they’re smart enough not to keep anything in their school locker. But I don’t think this was a curse, anyway.”

“What do you think this was?” Andy asked.

“I don’t know.”

A series of sounds—door bumping, keys jiggling, footsteps—cut their conversation short, and they heard Jake’s mum call out, “Jake? I’m back. Are you feeling any better?”

Before Jake could answer, she was in the doorway to his room, blinking as she realized Jake wasn’t alone. “Oh. Hi, boys,” she said, smiling at them but in a slightly puzzled way.

“Hi, Mrs. Riles,” Andy said, always willing to be their polite face. “We’ve come to check on Jake.”

“That’s very nice of you. How are you feeling, sweetie?”

“Better, mum,” Jake said. 

He still looked like death, and Mrs. Riles couldn’t know that it was a vast improvement from how he’d looked twenty minutes ago, so she didn’t look fully convinced. She felt his forehead and fussed over him until Jake had to tell her to cut it out, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Felix found it pretty funny until she turned her attention on him, still sitting on the floor.

“You don’t look very hot yourself, Felix,” she said. “Hope you didn’t catch whatever Jakey has.”

“Ah, um, no,” he said eloquently. “I—”

“Low blood sugar,” Andy said.

“Oh, you need something to eat, then. Let me see what I’ve got.”

She gave him some biscuits, but Felix wasn’t feeling very hungry and he ended up sneaking them to Sam, who probably thought that wasting food was some kind of sin. Then they all left Jake to the tender care of his mother and scattered to their respective homes. Felix went to his room without making a detour to the house. He wanted to sleep off the side-effects of his spell before he faced anyone from his family. 

He fell asleep awkwardly folded on his sofa and woke up with a crick in his neck. For a moment he was confused, wondering where he was, what time of the day it was, whether there was something he should be doing. He rubbed at the corner of his mouth, thinking he might have been drooling, and almost jumped out of his skin when he heard the sound of someone clearing their throat. He looked up and it was Ellen—because of course he’d told her to come and see him so he could explain everything. _Shit_ , he thought.

He moved into a sitting position. “Hey,” he said, massaging the back of his neck.

“You look awful,” she said. She didn’t sound concerned or curious, just stating a fact. 

“Just tired,” he said. Despite his nap, he felt punch-drunk exhausted and not really in the right frame of mind to tell Ellen the whole story; not that he really had a choice, because Ellen didn’t give second chances. “Come on, sit down.”

She stiffly sat next to him, but not too close. She’d worn her hair loose earlier in the day but now she had it done in two braids; he found it cute but figured that now wasn’t the right moment to mention it.

“You said you would tell me everything,” she said. “So, tell me then. What’s the big secret?”

“Okay,” Felix said. He was so not ready for this. “Just—don’t interrupt me, okay? You’re going to want to tell me I’m crazy, but just hold it in.” He’d made her defensive, because she narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms, but eventually she nodded. “It all started—well, it was all my fault.”

He talked about looking into magic to help Oscar, something he’d never shared with her. He explained how he’d used the distraction she’d provided not to put them in the same group, but to be with Jake, Sam and Andy. He saw her swallowing back her reaction, then, biting on her lip to keep herself from commenting, but when he got to the part where they realized they were in a different universe, she suddenly exploded.

“Are you trying to serve me the same bullshit than Sam told Mia? A parallel universe? _Magic_? Did leprechauns help you get back or what? Were there any unicorns?” Her voice held the particular brand of sarcasm that meant she felt hurt. “Come on, Felix! Stop joking around and tell me what really happened.”

“ _This_ is what really happened! And I can prove it. When we came back, we got those elemental powers and… Let me show you.”

She’d been about to stand up, but she stilled, and this was all the encouragement Felix needed. He held a hand out, palm up, and focused. No flame, no heat, so he focused harder, his heart racing—he wondered if the others could feel it—but whether because he was too nervous or because he was tapped out from the spell, fire wouldn’t respond to him.

“Brilliant demonstration,” Ellen said bitingly. 

“I don’t know why it’s not working—”

“Oh, _I_ know.” She stood up and looked down at him. Her eyes were shining, but he knew she would die before she cried in front of him. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you lied to me about changing the groups, and _used_ me—”

“So you believe _this_ , but not the rest! Well, thanks.”

“Because it’s the only part that doesn’t sound completely nuts! It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

Felix heard the faint sound of his mother calling him out for dinner, but he couldn’t reply while Ellen was watching him with that awful, wounded expression. Ellen’s armour wasn’t easily cracked, and he hated to think that he was the one doing it. He’d missed her so much while he was in the other universe, missed the Ellen who was friends with him and didn’t look at him like dirt under the sole of her shoe, and he’d promised himself he would ask her out once he was back. His plan wasn’t going well at all. He frantically looked for something to say, something to show her that would convince her that he was telling the truth, but his power was failing him and he had nothing else that would do the trick. 

“The worst part, I think,” she said, “is you replacing me with a jock, a nerd and a moron.”

Felix tensed at her words; she’d said that before, but not with nearly the same amount of venom and it made him feel defensive on behalf of his friends. “Don’t call them that,” he said. 

She pressed her lips in a tight line. “I see that you’ve made your choice. I think I’ll just go, now—your mum is calling for you, anyway.”

“Wait, Ellen—”

He stumbled on his own feet trying to get up, and she’d already ran out of the door by the time he was vertical. If he ran after her, they’d just get into a fight in the middle of the garden that would draw his parents’ attention. Felix dropped back heavily on his sofa, burying his face in his hands. It was fine, he tried to tell himself. He’d try to talk to her again, when his brain was less fried and his power back in working order. 

His mother called for him one more time, and it was a hassle to get up again to join his family for dinner. 

\---

The next day they held a war council in Felix’s room to decide whether to go to the party held for them or not. Jake was looking better than yesterday, although still not 100% healthy, and Felix was in a bad mood. They’d all felt him freak out the previous evening, but all the explanation they’d got from him was that his conversation with Ellen hadn’t gone well. Upon hearing this Andy felt a spark of—something. He wasn’t sure he wanted to examine what he was feeling too closely. 

“All the more reasons to go to that party!” Sam said. He’d been arguing in favour of party-going for the last ten minutes. “We haven’t done anything fun in ages.”

“Practising our elemental powers was fun,” Andy said.

“I mean _normal_ fun. No magic, no life-or-death situation. And Felix needs cheering up,” Sam said, bumping Felix’s shoulder.

Felix had been broodily hugging a cushion and he cast Sam a look. “A party isn’t very likely to cheer me up. They’re not exactly my thing.”

“I’m not very excited about this party,” Jake said, “but if we don’t show up I guess it could be taken as a proof that we have something to hide.”

“We do have something to hide,” Andy pointed out. 

“But we don’t have to act like it.”

“I see your point,” Andy said, nodding along. “It would be a good PR move. But are you sure you’re up for it, Jake? You still look pale.”

“Ugh, you sound like my mum. I’m fine. Besides, it should be all four of us going or none of us at all. Us against the world, right?”

“Yeah,” Felix said with a hint of bitterness. “Us against the world.”

It was indeed starting more and more to feel that way. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, and it was like some sort of pact was being renewed, even though they’d never made a pact to begin with—getting sent to the other universe and being bonded through the talisman had been forced onto them. They’d had to stick together to survive. Agreeing to go to that party together and face whatever would come out of it felt more like a real decision to have each other’s backs come hell or high water. Even if the hell in question was just being mocked or shunned by their fellow students at their own party.

“All right!” Sam enthused. “We’re doing this, then! I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun. A party is a party. How bad can it be?”

Felix looked about to cut in with something snarky, but his mother chose that moment to show up and he bit it back.

“Knock, knock,” Mrs. Ferne said, knocking on the doorframe at the same time. “Do you boys want something to drink or to eat?”

“Sam wants something to eat,” Felix said, and Andy and Jake sniggered. 

“I just have a fast metabolism,” Sam said defensively.

“I can get you something to eat, Sam, no problem,” Mrs. Ferne said. “What about the rest of you?”

“I actually have to go,” Andy said apologetically. “But thank you, Mrs. Ferne. See you tonight, then,” he said to his friends. 

The rest of the day was spent doing his homework for the next week in advance—if another magical crisis struck, at least it would be one less thing to worry about—and trying to decide what he would wear at the party, under the sardonic eye of his sister.

“Seriously,” she said from where she was watching him in the doorway, “who are you trying to impress? Your weirdo friends? A _girl_?”

“Go away, Viv,” Andy said, leaning deeper into his drawer so she wouldn’t see the blush on his face. “And I’m not trying to impress anyone. I just want to look presentable.”

“You’re not going to improve your social status with your sense of fashion. That one,” she said out of the blue.

“What?” Andy had at least three shirts in his hands and he looked from one to the other, trying to figure out what had caught his sister’s attention. “Which one are you talking about?”

“The blue one. Blue’s your colour,” she said, then walked out of the room.

 _Blue is the colour of water,_ Andy thought, and he decided to select the shirt for that reason—and certainly not because Vivian was recommending it. Blue did feel like _his_ colour on a symbolical level. In the bathroom he experimented with a sink full of water, just as he’d done for the past few days. He was really getting better at this, he thought as he held a blob of floating water between his hands. At least he didn’t get splashed right away anymore, but it was still hard to stay in control. The water felt like a living thing, like it was actively trying to escape and he had to hold it in place through sheer force of will. He felt pressure build up inside his head, inside his chest, more and more until he couldn’t stand it and released the water in the sink, along with a loud exhale. Droplets hit his face, but he’d mostly remained dry through the process and counted it as progress. Feeling thirsty, he scooped some water from the sink to drink. He finished getting ready, then had to withstand the barrage of his mother and grand-mother’s concerns. 

“Keep your phone on,” Mum said. “I’ll call you during the evening to check on you. Be back before midnight.”

“Eleven,” his grand-mother said sternly.

“Nai-Nai!” Andy protested. He saw that his mother was seriously considering yielding to his grand-mother and he turned to his father, who was absorbedly reading a newspaper. “Dad, help me!”

“The last time you helped him out with something like that, he went missing for two weeks,” Mum reminded Dad.

“Sorry, son,” Dad said. “I think eleven is a perfectly adequate time to come back from a party.”

At least they weren’t stopping him from going, which he’d worried about initially. He wasn’t sure why he was so intent on going to a party that he was sure would go down poorly, but if Jake, Sam and Felix were going, then he had to be there too. They had a tacit pact, after all. 

The party was taking place in an abandoned barn at the edge of the forest that regularly got converted into party space by students from Bremin High School. Andy met up with his friends at the start of the path that led to the barn. Oscar was there too, wheeled by his brother. When Andy joined them, Felix nodded at their group and said, “Let’s go, then,” like they were embarking on a mission.

Music echoed down the path, and whiffs of grilled meat reached them before they even got to the barn. There were already about twenty people there, dancing, drinking, or taking care of the barbecue. A garland of colourful lights had been pinned along the roof of the barn, as well as a banner that said, ‘WELCOME HOME JAKE SAM FELIX ANDY.” Each of their names had been written in a different colour: Jake was green, Sam yellow, Felix red, and Andy himself was blue. It seemed strangely right on point. 

“Hey, they’re here,” someone said, and then everyone stopped what they were doing and started clapping. 

Some of the clapping felt distinctively ironic, but some people actually looked genuine. Andy and the others entered the barn and everyone made way for them. Someone shoved a drink in Andy’s hand and he mumbled a startled word of thanks, immediately emptying his cup—he’d feared for a second that there was alcohol in it, but it just tasted like fruit juice. Fortunately, the excitement of their arrival soon subsided, and now that they’d acknowledged the reason for the party people returned to their fun. Andy observed the crowd: there were very few members of the football team, but Trent and Dylan were there, already aggressively drunk—their hair were still very pink and Andy caught them shooting murderous looks their way, although they kept their distance. More surprisingly, Ellen was there too; she was talking with Mia and acted like she wasn’t even aware of their presence.

“I don’t know why she’s come.” Andy looked over his shoulder and saw that Felix was looking at Ellen too. “She doesn’t even like parties.” 

“Are she and Mia, like, friends now?” Sam asked.

“Why not?” Jake said. “There’ve been weirder friendships,” he added playfully.

“The other universe is catching up to us,” Andy murmured, and his stomach did a little flip.

Sam got them drinks and they lingered awkwardly at the edge of the party. Most of the things they wanted to talk about were not for everyone’s ears, which put a damper on the conversation. Andy couldn’t stop looking at Ellen—even with the purple eyeshade, the eyeliner and the black lipstick, the sight of her face always brought to the surface the memories of the other Ellen smiling up at him. For some reason he’d taken with him the necklace that she had given him, and he felt like it was burning a hole in his pocket.

“Okay, time to have some fun,” Sam said, thumping his empty cup on a table. “Who wants to dance?”

Felix gave him a ‘ _did you hit your head?_ ’ kind of look. “I’ll stay with Oscar, thanks,” he said.

“Oh, but don’t deprive yourself on my account,” Oscar said, and Felix flicked his shoulder.

Andy downed his drink and said, “Excuse me.”

Before he could second-guess himself—or let the others talk him out of it—he was weaving his way across the dancing space to where Mia and Ellen were talking. Mia saw him and gave him a little smile of acknowledgement, but Ellen kept pretending he wasn’t there until he actually called her name. She turned then, giving him a cold once over. This Ellen had never looked at him any other way, but Andy still thought that her glare was extra sharp today, probably because she was mad at Felix and Andy was tainted by association. 

“What do you want?” Ellen demanded. 

Andy tried to swallow, but even though he’d just had two drinks already his mouth was parched, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “Hi,” he said. “I just—” On his way across the barn he’d prepared what he wanted to say, but words suddenly eluded him. Mutedly he got the necklace from his pocket and let the pendant dangle from his fist, showing it to Ellen. “Do you recognize this?”

Ellen’s eyes flickered to the necklace, then back to Andy. “Should I?”

The other Ellen had looked so certain that her alternate self would recognize this necklace that Andy’s heart sunk. “It’s for you,” he said, and Ellen frowned.

“Why would you give me an ugly necklace?” she asked. “Did Felix put you up to this? Because you can tell him that his choice of a messenger sucks.”

Then she angled away from Andy so he would be faced with her shoulder. He stood there for a few seconds, humiliation making his face burn and his stomach churn. When he made it back to his friends, he saw that Sam was in the middle of the dancing crowd. Felix gave him an icy look, but said nothing, and Jake leaned to him. “That was kind of uncool,” he said in a low voice. 

“Why?” Andy asked mutinously. 

“You know why.” Jake glanced at Felix, who was talking to Oscar and pretended he couldn’t hear them, and then sighed. “Sam’s right, we’re here to have fun. I’m going to have fun. You two talk it out.”

Jake went to mingle, and Andy was left with Felix and Oscar in uncomfortable silence.

“Well,” Oscar said after a moment. “How not awkward at all.”

“I need a drink,” Andy said and took off.

He grabbed a bottle of something and poured it in a cup that he drunk in one go. Then he served himself another drink, then another. Maybe it was because of nerves, but he was so unbearably _thirsty_. He looked down at the liquid in his cup and wondered if he could manipulate it. Wondered if Ellen would look at him differently if she knew what he could do. Why hadn’t Felix shown her his power to convince her, by the way? He had so much more control over it than Andy had over water. As Andy had that thought, he saw that the juice in his cup was rising over the rim—he hadn’t even realized he was doing anything. He released his grip on it and the liquid sloshed about the cup, splashing the cuff of Andy’s shirt. Feeling suddenly queasy, Andy put his cup on the table. It was getting hot inside the barn and he was sweating under his collar.

 _I need water_. He walked along the tables that had been pushed against the walls, looking for some water. There was a wide variety of juices and sodas, and even some alcohol, but no water. Andy made his way back to Felix and Oscar, cringing against the loud chatter, the thumping music. He tugged at his collar, taking big gulps of the too thick air.

“Andy?” he heard Jake say as he walked past him.

When he got to Felix and Oscar, Felix looked marginally less hostile, even worried. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“I need some air,” Andy said.

He walked outside, blinking against the glare of the sun. _Something’s wrong,_ the rational part of his mind remarked, but it was overridden by a continuous cry of _water, water, water!_ He closed his eyes, and _there_ —he could feel a body of water about ten minutes from here, as clearly as he could feel Jake, Sam and Felix without looking, as though they were all a part of him. He stumbled blindly in direction of the water, almost tripping over one of the bundles of straw stacked next to the barn. He heard his name being called and knew that his friends had started following him, but it didn’t register as very important. The only important thing was his strident need for water, the call he could feel from the pond that was a while away. He wasn’t really thirsty anymore, but was strung along in that direction with no willpower to fight the pull. 

“Andy! Andy, stop!” That was Jake. “Andy, wait up!” Sam, now. “Where’re you going?” Felix, this time. 

Andy realized he’d started running, not really because he was trying to escape his friends, but rather because he was in a hurry to get to his destination. Something was urgent, although he couldn’t have said what it was. Finally, he got to a small pond almost entirely swallowed by reeds, cut by a fallen tree trunk. The soil at the edge of the pond was loose and he almost lost his footing trying to reach the water. He walked into it, ankle-deep, then faltered for a moment. His first impulse was to drink the dirty-looking water, but somehow it didn’t feel like it was enough. Throwing himself into the pond wouldn’t be enough either—he needed a way to become _one_ with the water, to make the barrier between his solid flesh and the liquid around him crumble. 

“Andy, what’re you doing?”

He ignored his friends, trying instead to remember a spell he’d read on the internet. The words floated to the surface of his mind and he started mumbling them feverishly, “Elements of water—”

“Andy! Hey, Andy, come on!”

“—flow again—”

“Andy!”

The smooth surface of the pond was rippling and Andy felt hypnotized by its hidden depths. He got the rest of the spell out in hurried bursts, then his vision blurred. The voice of his friends became distant and weirdly echoing, his body started to feel too light, and suddenly the water surrounded him and everything went dark.

\---

“Andy! Andy!”

Jake was down the slope leading to the pond before he even realized he’d moved. He splashed around, calling Andy until his voice was hoarse, getting his jeans soaked and muddy. 

“Jake!” Felix called. “Come back!”

“He’s here! Can’t you feel it? He’s right _here_.”

Worse than watching Andy get absorbed into the pond was that sense that Andy was still there. Even with his back on them, Jake knew where Felix and Sam stood. In the exact same way he knew that Andy was— _in_ the pond, _was_ the pond? It was hard to tell, but the Andy presence was very strong and Jake couldn’t stop stirring the water with his hands, hoping he would hit Andy’s body and be able to pull him out. 

“I can feel him, he’s here!” Jake repeated.

“I know,” Felix said, his eyes roaming over the murky surface of the pond. “I know, but you’re not going to find him like that.”

Sam helped Jake out of the pond and they joined Felix, who had crouched at the edge and was dangling the talisman over the water. “Come on, Andy, come on, come on,” he muttered. 

“What the hell happened, anyway?” Sam said. “Why did Andy take off like that? 

“Yeah, did you say something to him, Felix?” Jake asked. It came out more accusatory than he’d meant, and Felix glared at him.

“I didn’t say anything,” he said defensively. “We didn’t talk at all. Andy said he needed a drink, then he came back and he looked—strained.” Felix’s eyes drifted back to the pond. “He was mumbling a spell, right before he—disappeared. If only we knew what it was…”

Felix started looking into his journal, intermittently muttering spells that didn’t seem to have much of an effect, and Jake was getting cold. Without anything better to do, Jake and Sam kept looking into the pond. Sam used air to move the water around, which resulted in both of them getting drenched. After about an hour of that, Jake and Sam were both shivering uncontrollably and Felix looked frustrated.

“Let’s get back,” Sam said. “People are going to wonder where we’ve gone.”

“What about Andy?” Jake protested.

“We’ll come back! But we haven’t accomplished much of anything so far, and it’s getting dark.”

“Sam’s right,” Felix said, somewhat reluctantly. “I need to do some research, try to figure out what Andy was doing.”

“Okay, _fine_ ,” Jake said, and started walking back to the barn, making squishy sounds with each step. 

He felt pissed off, but it wasn’t really anger aimed at Sam and Felix, just frustration and worry over Andy. He felt like they were abandoning him, but he had no idea of what to do to help him. 

“Wait,” Felix said. “You two are soaked. Let me try something.”

Jake warily watched Felix hold out a hand, understanding that his friend meant to use his fire power. “Don’t set me on fire,” he said. 

Felix arched an eyebrow at him, then focused on the palm of his hand until a very small flame appeared. It was barely a flicker of light, but Jake could feel its heat when Felix got his hand closer. In a few minutes, Jake’s clothes were more or less dry, even though he was still very mud-stained. Felix did the same thing for Sam, who let out a whistle.

“Now, that’s useful,” he said. 

Felix addressed him a tiny smile. “Useful when it works,” he said. 

By the time they walked back to the barn, it was almost completely dark and they guided themselves with the coloured lights from the party. Even before they got there, though, Jake started to think that something might be wrong. The reason for his bad feeling hit him suddenly.

“There’s no music,” he said. “Why did the music stop?”

“Here they are!” someone exclaimed when they emerged out of the trees. 

No one was dancing or drinking or eating anymore, and they were all looking at them. Jake and his friends froze, feeling put on the spot. 

“Where’s Andy?”

A girl elbowed her way to the front of the crowd, and Jake felt his stomach sink when he recognized Vivian, Andy’s sister. His feeling of dread grew even stronger when he saw that she was followed closely by Andy’s mother. _Shit, shit, shit, this is so bad._

“I keep calling Andy on his phone,” Mrs. Lau said, “but he won’t answer. No one here knows where he is. Have you seen him?”

“No,” Jake managed to get out.

“We don’t know where he is,” Felix said.

Vivian narrowed her eyes at them. “You’re lying,” she said accusingly. “The four of you have been joined at the hip since you came back, and now you want us to believe that you have no idea where he is?”

“It’s true!” Sam said. “We totally don’t know where he is. Why wouldn’t we tell you if we knew?”

Vivian still looked extremely suspicious, but Mrs. Lau shushed her with a look and said, “When was the last time you saw him, then?”

“Well.” Felix shared a rapid look with them before going on. “We saw him take off in that direction, and we went after him because he looked—he was running, so we thought something might be wrong. But we’ve been looking for him since then and we can’t find him.”

Jake was awed that Felix managed to sound so collected while giving his explanation—even though it was mostly the truth, if not the whole of it—but he probably shouldn’t have been surprised. Felix was good with secrets. From then on, though, their evening went completely downhill. Mrs. Lau called the police, and while they searched the area around the barn, Jake and the others got stuck being grilled at the police station. They were supposed to be witnesses, but Jake felt that they were treated like suspects. 

The next day, they were summoned to the police station again, despite their parents’ protests. There, they were startled to meet with _Roland_ —or rather, as he introduced himself, Detective Sergeant Roland Murphy.

“He looks like Roland’s evil twin,” Sam whispered to Jake, who had to swallow a nervous giggle. They sat together on the uncomfortable plastic chairs of the police station while their mothers argued with Roland—well, Detective Murphy. 

“It doesn’t make sense that he should be so different from the other world,” Felix said. “But, anyway—we stick to our story and we should be fine.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. He wished he felt that confident. “Have you found anything to help Andy?”

Felix shook his head, making hair fly in his eyes. “No—I wanted to see Phoebe, but well. Haven’t had the time or the opportunity, but I—"

He cut himself off when Detective Murphy came up to them. “Felix Ferne,” he said, and Jake saw Felix swallow. “Come with me, please.”

Felix and his mum followed the detective, Felix looking like a man walking to the gallows. Jake was the last one to be interviewed, and the wait was nerve-wracking. Felix didn’t say much while it was Sam’s turn, but he looked upset in that turned-inward Felix way.

“This is _not_ the Roland we know,” he said. Then, “He said that people saw Andy talk with Ellen, and that he’d looked upset afterward. Just, just go with it if he talked to you about it. You can say that Andy liked Ellen, or whatever. Say as much of the truth as possible.”

When Jake’s turn came, he felt like he’d swallowed a whole block of ice and it was weighing down on his stomach.

“It’ll be all right, love,” his mother told him, petting his hair. “You just say what happened and then we’ll be on our way.”

She shot a dirty look at the back of Detective Murphy’s head, and Jake felt a little bit better from her defensiveness of him, but not much. Because ‘saying what happened’ was simply not an option and there would be plenty of room for Jake to look suspicious. 

He had only seen interrogation rooms in movies, and it wasn’t fun on this side of reality. The room Murphy took him to was small, uncomfortable and barren—probably designed to make you want to tell the truth just to be out of there faster.

“So, Jake,” Detective Murphy said. “Tell us what happened.”

Jake dutifully repeated the abridged version of the truth that they’d already told the police yesterday. 

“And you don’t know what had Andy so upset? He didn’t say anything to any of you before he ran to the forest?”

Jake hesitated, remembering what Felix had told him about Murphy knowing that Andy had talked to Ellen, but they’d already declared that they didn’t know what was wrong with Andy. “No,” he said. “He didn’t say anything. Just ran off.”

“And you chased after him.”

“Not— _chased_. We just wanted to know what was wrong.”

Jake expected Murphy to move on to the topic of Andy and Ellen, but what Murphy asked next was, “You boys have become very close friends since your ordeal in the woods, right?”

“Yeah,” Jake said, unease pooling low in his stomach. This wasn’t a lie, so he shouldn’t be so nervous, but he wasn’t sure where Murphy was going with it.

“Surviving together in difficult circumstances will do that, of course.” He waited until Jake had responded with a hesitant nod before adding, “Having a shared secret will do that too.” 

“What are you implying, detective?” Jake’s mum asked crossly.

Murphy ignored her. “What happened in the woods, Jake? Were you even in the woods? Because I’ve read the reports and there were no traces of you beyond Andy Lau’s backpack. Not in the area where you were found or anywhere around it.”

“What does it have to do with what happened to Andy yesterday?” Mum asked.

This time Detective Murphy looked at her. “Mrs. Riles,” he said, “I understand that you want to protect your son. But I’m sure even you have wondered about the exact circumstances of the boys’ disappearance. And now, just a week later, one of those boys disappears _again_ , and the last people who’ve seen him are the ones who went missing with him in the first place. Do you want to know what I think, Jake?”

“No,” Jake said, but his throat was so tight that it came out squeaky.

“I think that you never got lost in the woods, but decided to run away together. Did you always mean to come back, or did you just miss the comfort of your homes? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter much. But this is your secret, and Andy Lau wanted to tell the truth. So you made sure he wouldn’t betray you.”

“We didn’t hurt Andy!” Jake exclaimed, his anger at Murphy’s accusations overriding his fear and unease. “We’d _never_ hurt him.”

He felt a tremor under his feet and bit back on the rest of his tirade. This was _not_ the moment to go all earthquake-y on Detective Murphy. Even though right now he wouldn’t mind it if the ground opened under the man’s feet and swallowed him— Jake grabbed the glass of water that Murphy had put in front of him and drank, trying to think calming thoughts. _Playing football, watching the game on TV with Mum, hanging out with the guys at the hideout, punching that arsehole in the mouth—oops._

“Did you feel that?” Mum asked. “Those quakes are becoming more frequent.”

Detective Murphy gave her a bland uncomprehending look, then focused again on Jake. “Maybe _you_ didn’t want to hurt him. Peer pressure is hard to resist.”

“I wasn’t even friends with Felix and Andy before all of this happened,” Jake said. “Why would I agree to run away with them?”

Murphy spread his hands open. “The excitement, the attention, any number of reasons.”

“Felix and I didn’t get along at all before. I wouldn’t have followed him anywhere if I had the choice.”

Murphy almost smiled and Jake had the dim sense that he’d made a mistake. “Interesting that you would mention Felix Ferne,” he said. “How much do you know about what happened to his brother?”

Jake shrugged. “He fell off a tree. Everyone knows that.”

“A tree that he was climbing with Felix.”

“Yeah.” Jake suddenly saw where Murphy was going with this and he had to quell another earthquake in the making. “Felix didn’t hurt his brother, and he didn’t hurt Andy!” If Murphy had made the same accusation to Felix’s face, no wonder Felix had looked so crushed afterward. “Why are you so down on him, anyway? Is it because he’s a Goth?”

“Jakey, calm down,” Mum said, applying a gentle pressure to his wrist. Jake realized then that he’d clenched his fist so hard that his knuckles were white—but the earth wasn’t shaking, so that was progress. “Detective, I think we’re done now.”

Even Detective Murphy couldn’t resist Mum’s _we’re-done-now_ voice, so he let them go. On the way back home, Mum asked Jake hesitantly, “I’ve never pressured you to talk about it, but—what happened when you were lost? You know you can tell me anything. I won’t be mad, no matter what the truth is.”

“What, you think I’m lying too?” Jake asked hotly, which made her drop the topic. He felt awful about it, because he _was_ lying to her, but in the sea of things for him to feel awful about, this was just another drop and he had to take it. 

Mum had taken the day off and she didn’t want Jake to go out, and he knew that Sam and Felix were similarly grounded. It wasn’t a punishment, their parents told them, but with the police breathing down their necks it was safer not to give them any opportunity to get into more trouble. Jake spent the next few hours in his room, stewing in his anger and worry, and plotting his escape. His mum eventually gave up on trying to make him watch a movie with her and settled in front of the TV by herself. Once he was sure that she was sufficiently absorbed in her movie, he made it out through the window of his room. 

They’d planned to meet up at Phoebe’s shop and Felix was the first there, fiddling nervously with the strap of his satchel. Jake remembered Murphy’s accusations about Felix and felt fresh anger wash over him. 

“Hey,” he said, kicking at absent gravel on the pavement. “You okay? Murphy’s interrogation was full-on.”

“Yeah,” Felix said. “But it won’t matter anymore when we get Andy back.”

It was silly, but the determined way Felix said it made Jake feel better for the first time since Andy had been absorbed in the pond. When Sam showed up, the three of them entered the magic shop. 

“Oh, it’s you,” Phoebe said in her usual disgruntled way. “Problems with your powers again?”

Felix looked around the shop to make sure they were alone, even though Jake didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone but them in here, in this world or in the other one. 

“Andy disappeared,” he said. 

Phoebe frowned, and she looked away briefly before focusing again on Felix. “What do you mean, ‘disappear’?” Like you disappeared? Like— _Alice_ disappeared?”

“No, not exactly—we saw it happen and it wasn’t like when we got to the other world.” 

Felix told her the whole story, and Jake couldn’t help but wince when he got to the part where Andy melted into the pond. While Felix talked Sam wandered around the shop, messing with the crystals until Phoebe told him to stop. 

To Felix, she said, “Do you remember anything from the spell Andy cast?”

Jake wouldn’t have been able to tell her one word of it, but Felix had apparently been paying closer attention. Phoebe rubbed her chin thoughtfully and said, “It sounds familiar. Come on, let’s have a look at the books.”

She cuffed the back of Sam’s head when she walked past him, and he almost dropped the pendant he’d been holding. In the backroom, there were several books already open on one of the round tables, along with sheets of paper covered in notes. 

“What’s that?” Sam said, leaning over them to read. “Summoning—”

“That’s none of your business,” Phoebe said, hip-checking Sam to get him out of her way and then gathering the books and notes in her arms. “You’re here to help your friend Andy, right?”

“You said the spell sounded familiar,” Felix said. “What is it? What did Andy do?”

Phoebe put the stuff in her arms away and grabbed another book, flipping through it. “This,” she said, tapping her finger on a page. “A spell to summon a water spirit.”

“But there was no water spirit,” Sam said. “Just Andy going ‘ _poof._ ’”

“Obviously, the spell backfired somehow,” Phoebe said with a shrug. “Either he said it wrong, or he deliberately changed it for whatever reason.”

“Andy didn’t summon a water spirit, but—” Jake said. 

“—he _turned_ into one,” Felix said. “That’s it! Andy is still there, but he’s a water spirit bound to the pond.”

“How can we get him back to normal?” Jake asked.

“We could use that summoning spell, then—Phoebe, do you have some sort of reversal spell?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. I’ve seen one in Alice’s book of shadow.”

Phoebe and Felix figured out the magic stuff together, while Jake kept a nervous eye on his watch. The movie his mother had put on lasted about two hours and a half; they’d been gone half-an-hour already. He would take any punishment she might inflict on him for disobeying if it meant that they got Andy back, but if possible he would rather avoid disappointing her again. 

“All right,” Felix said. “These are pretty powerful spells, so we need something to sacrifice.”

“What, like _human_ sacrifice?” Sam exclaimed, eyebrows shooting up.

Felix rolled his eyes. “No, Sam. Like, an object. Something meaningful. I have—” His fingers brushed against his satchel. “—something that might work for the first spell, but for the reversal spell we need something of Andy.”

“Something of Andy,” Jake repeated. “You mean we have to go to Andy’s? On a Sunday, when his family are probably all there? They’re not going to let us look through his stuff!”

“We can say that Andy borrowed a textbook from one of us, and—"

“Andy, forgetting to bring his books to school?”

“Okay, not that,” Felix conceded. “Something else, then. But we don’t exactly have a choice, we need it for the spell.” He smiled at Phoebe. “Thanks for the help, Phoebe.”

Phoebe ducked her head and grumbled, “Get out of here before you try my patience.”

Jake had been fairly certain that the Lau family wouldn’t be glad to see them, and he wasn’t disappointed. Vivian was the one to open the door and she almost slammed it to their face. Her mother was more circumspect and eventually let them in, but the way she looked at them made Jake think that she was trying to read them for any sign of guilt. Andy’s grand-mother wasn’t there, maybe working at her restaurant—thank God, because Jake found her terrifying—and his dad was the friendliest of the bunch, although he was still guarded. They had to swear again that they had no idea what had happened to Andy before they could get their request in.

“Andy borrowed—a pen from me,” Felix said. “I hate to bother you at a time like this, but it’s kind of a lucky charm for me and I—really want to have it back, so could we just have a quick look at Andy’s room?”

“Tell me what it looks like and I’ll get it for you,” Mrs. Lau said. 

“Oh, thanks, but—it’ll really be quicker if I look for it myself. It doesn’t look anything special; it just has sentimental value.”

Mrs. Lau relented, but had her daughter escort them, and they started looking through the room under Vivian Lau’s hawk eye. Andy’s room held no surprise—there was a giant poster of Bear Gryll over Andy’s bed, and plastic sculptures of oversized molecules on shelves over his desk.

“A _pen_ , seriously?” Jake whispered when he got close to Felix.

“First thing that popped into my mind. And we’re here, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, but—” 

Jake’s eyes slid to where Vivian was watching them, arms crossed over her chest. Jake tugged at Sam’s sleeve, and fortunately Sam understood what he had to do without Jake having to spell it out. He walked up to Vivian and planted himself in front of her, partially obscuring her view of the room.

“Hey, Viv,” he said. “Is that new glasses?”

Jake tuned out the conversation between Sam and Vivian, and started going hurriedly through the drawers in Andy’s desk while Felix focused on his nightstand. Under one of the drawers he felt paper and discovered an envelope that had been stuck under it. _Bingo_ , he thought, pulling at it. Inside the envelop he found the pink folded piece of paper with “ME + U = LOVE” that the other Ellen had given Andy. He showed it to Felix, who made a sour face but nodded. His mouth pressed in a tight line he grabbed a pen from the drawer Jake had opened, and said, “Got it! Thanks, Vivian.”

Jake shoved the folded paper under his t-shirt and echoed Felix, “Yeah, thank you. We—” Vivian looked supremely irritated with Sam and that made him falter. “We really hope that Andy is found soon.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed glare. “If you know anything about what happened to him—”

“We don’t,” he said. 

She huffed, obviously not convinced, but she had to let them go. After another round of assuring that Lau family that they would immediately tell them if they heard from Andy, they left and hurried to the pond. Jake checked his watch again: one more hour of safety, at least if his mother didn’t have to crazy idea to check on him before the end of her movie. At the pond, Felix chanted the spell that was supposed to summon the water spirit and then tore the other Ellen’s gift to shreds. 

“Dude!” Sam exclaimed. “Andy’s so going to kill you.”

“What did you think I was going to do with it? Wear it on my head and dance around the pond?”

“Well, I don’t know, but—”

“Guys,” Jake said. He’d kept his eyes on the pond so he didn’t miss the way the surface had started bubbling. “I think something’s happening.”

Out of the murky pond a silhouette of clear water emerged, rising from it until it hovered about half a foot over the surface. It was about Andy’s size and what Jake could make out of its features looked very much like Andy. 

“Andy?” Jake breathed out.

“Dude!” Sam said. “Wow, Andy, you’re all—water-y. Way to live up to your element.”

Felix stepped closer to the pond. “Andy, can you talk?” The Andy-like water thing remained still. “Can you understand me?”

The thing let out a garbled _‘Felix._ ’

“Okay,” Felix said, although he was looking uneasy. The day was unusually cold and misty, and yet Jake was starting to sweat. “Just hold on, Andy. I have this reversal spell, and—”

This was when the thing launched itself at them. It was _flying_ , letting droplets of water fly in its wake, and for a moment they were so dumbfounded by this turn of event that they only scattered once it was right in their faces. 

“Run!” Jake shouted. 

They took off through the forest. The best runner of the three, Jake found himself taking the lead easily, but he had no idea of where he should go. Not anywhere with people, that was for sure. Would leading the thing away from the pond affect it in any way?

“What’s this thing?” Sam shouted as he ran. “Is that really Andy?”

“I don’t know!” Felix shouted back. “Feels like it, but if it’s Andy then he’s not recognizing us!”

“No _shit!_ ” Jake growled.

He threw a look over his shoulder and saw that Felix was losing ground, the water thing almost on him.

“Felix!” Jake yelled. “Faster!”

A branched whipped the side of his face and he groaned and stumbled, his cheek stinging. Finding his footing back, he started running again until he heard Felix scream. He whirled around then and saw that Felix had fallen to the ground and that water Andy was floating over him, only held back by a small ball of fire that Felix must have summoned. Sam was running back to their friend and Jake followed suit, but before they could reach him Felix’s fire had fizzled out.

“Felix!”

Sam waved his arms and a gust of air tore through the bushes and slammed into the water spirit, which was pushed back a few meters. Felix had risen to his knees, fumbling with a piece of paper that must have the reversal spell written on it.

“Distract him!” he shouted.

 _Easier said than done,_ Jake thought; if he made the earth shake it wouldn’t affect the floating spirit one bit. Maybe if he could control the dirt the same way he had after the prank from the footy team—

“Hey, I’m right here!” Sam was yelling, waving his arms. “Come and get me!”

The water spirit turned to Sam but seemed to have a floating moment of hesitation before it rushed at him, maybe wary of Sam’s air blast. Felix was chanting a spell, but Jake had no concentration left to spare to the words as he focused on the earth around him, the rich, dense earth of the forest ground. He felt it around him the way he felt the hair stand up on his forearms. For a moment that was both brief and very long, he was aware of his surroundings in a way that bordered on too much, aware of the life teeming underground and crawling on the surface, of the webs of roots from the plants and trees reaching down, down, down. He held his hand out, grabbed, and _threw_. At his command, a cloud of dirt leapt at the water spirit, which was trying to lash at Sam. The earth met the body of water and sunk into it, slowing the water spirit down. Sam jumped to the side to duck an attack, and when the spirit tried for another one it moved slowly and clumsily, weighed down by the dirt that floated inside it, and Sam could escape it easily. Felix intoned the last words of his spell and tore something apart, and then the water spirit contorted, gurgled something indistinct and plummeted to the ground.

Jake sprinted up to his friends. “Felix? Sam? Are you guys okay?” When he got to where the water spirit had fallen, his eyes caught sight of a familiar blue shirt. “ _Andy?_ ”

Sam scrambled to his feet. “Andy!”

Andy was on all four on the forest ground, his head down, groaning. Jake jumped over a fallen log and tumbled to his knees next to him. Patting his back, he asked softly, “Andy? You all right, mate?”

Andy’s hair and shirt were slightly damp, not like he’d taken a swim but rather like he’d spent some time under a fine drizzle. He lifted his head and looked up at Jake, his eyes a little unfocused at first but rapidly clearing. “Jake?” He looked around, blinking. “Felix? Sam? What happened?”

“You were turned into a water spirit,” Jake said. “Or—turned yourself, I think.”

“What?”

“You attacked us!” Sam said. “Guess you weren’t yourself, though, so it’s fine.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Felix asked. 

Andy sat back on his butt, combing fingers through his bangs. “The party? We were at the party, and I—” He flushed suddenly and seemed to be avoiding looking at Felix. “I’m sorry,” he said. “About—”

“It’s fine,” Felix said, dismissing the apology with a wave. “What else?”

“I was—really thirsty for some reason, and I felt drawn to—Was there a pond, or did I dream it?”

“There definitely was a pond,” Jake said. “From our point of view it looked like you actually melted into the pond.”

“It was freaky as hell,” Sam said.

“It looks like you used a spell that is supposed to summon water spirits,” Felix said. “Why did do you do that?”

Andy shook his head, still looking dazed. “I know I found this spell on the Internet, but it’s all a blur and I don’t remember what I was trying to do.”

“It’s okay,” Jake assured him. “Let’s get you back home, now. We’ll have time to figure this out another day.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. His eyes were drawn to something on the ground and when Jake followed his look, he saw the pieces of what Felix had torn for the spell scattered at his feet. “Felix, is that Oscar’s comics?”

Felix gathered the pieces in his hands. “I needed something to sacrifice for the spell I used to get you back. It had to be something meaningful for it to work. Don’t worry,” he added with a smile. “Oscar will be thrilled to hear that his comics was a game changer. We, um, actually had to do two spells, and for the first one I had to sacrifice something of yours.” He handed out to Andy the pieces of Ellen’s card. “Sorry. We can tape it back together.”

Andy accepted the pieces and put them in his pocket. “I don’t know,” he said, his head hanging down. “Maybe it’s better if I just forget about Ellen. The Ellen from the other world isn’t the same as the Ellen here.”

“Oh, I don’t know. They have quite a few common points, if you look past their senses of aesthetics. They both can slaughter you with a few words.”

Andy’s mouth twitched into a half-smile. “Yeah, but one of them fancies me and the other—very much doesn’t.”

Felix’s expression darkened, probably from remembering that the Ellen from their world wasn’t a great fan of his at the moment either, and Jake decided he had to stop them before their moping got out of hand. “Can we just go home now? My mum is gonna freak out when she notices I’m gone, and Andy’s parents have been freaking out since yesterday—”

“Wait, what?” Andy said. “How long was I gone?”

Jake shared a look with Sam and Felix. “Let’s talk about it while we walk back, okay?”


	4. Chapter 4

Karen Ferne fussed with the teapot and the cups on the tray she’d prepared, nervous without knowing why. In her living room, waiting for her, were Sarah Riles, Nicole and Michael Lau, and Dee Conte. They’d become her friends over the terrible two weeks of the boys’ disappearance; in a way, the experience had bonded them as tightly as it had their sons. Well, not quite as tightly, and this was precisely what this meeting was about. Karen added biscuits to her tray and carried it to the living room.

“Here you go,” she said, pouring tea in the cups and handing them out.

“Thanks, Karen,” Sarah said, smiling warmly at her. 

Karen smiled back and drew a chair for herself. A warm breeze carried through the screen door into the room, making the tablecloth flutter. 

“Those biscuits are delicious, Karen,” Dee said.

“Oh, thank you,” Karen said. “It’s my grand-mother’s recipe. I’ll give it to you if you want it. How’s Andy? ” she asked Nicole and Michael. 

“He says he’s fine,” Nicole said in a way that told Karen that she wasn’t convinced.

“The doctor said he’s fine,” Michael said, wrapping an arm around his wife’s shoulders and squeezing one.

“ _Physically_ he’s fine,” Nicole said. “But how can you get lost in the woods for two weeks, and then spend one more day there wandering around and be _fine_?”

Nicole snapped the last word, not looking at any of them or acknowledging her husband’s attempt at comfort. Karen couldn’t blame her; how awful had it been, getting Andy back and then losing him again so soon? Karen’s eyes involuntarily drifted to the window and the corner of the building where Felix’s room was, all the way across the garden. Felix and Oscar were there, kept away from the adults’ conversation. Felix hadn’t told her much about how he and the other boys had found Andy, and Andy himself claimed he didn’t remember a lot about how he’d managed to get lost. Karen didn’t want to believe Detective Murphy when he said that the boys were hiding something, but it was becoming increasingly difficult not to. Felix had been acting strained and on edge, but, to her shame, Karen wasn’t quite sure whether this was new behaviour for him. He’d always been intensely private and had only become even more so over the years. Especially since—

Forcing herself back to the present, she said, “So we’ve all decided to meet today so we could discuss the boys’—recent behaviour.”

“I’m worried about Sam,” Dee said. “He hasn’t been the same at all since he came back. Normally, he’s always talking my ear off but now—He barely talks to me anymore. I don’t know anything about the time they’ve gone missing.”

“Andy hasn’t told us anything either,” Nicole said.

Felix was the same, of course, but Karen didn’t chime in because this was par for the course in her relationship with her oldest. 

“They’ve gone through a lot,” Sarah said. “It’s not surprising that they’ve been changed by the experience.”

“Maybe they just need time,” Karen said. 

“Andy was never this secretive before,” Nicole insisted. “And he never skipped classes either. He’s always been very focused on his school work, I find it hard to believe that the thought would even enter his mind! I just—I don’t think the boys are bringing the best out of each other.”

“Are you saying that our sons are a bad influence on Andy?” Sarah asked, frowning. 

The atmosphere chilled considerably at the question. “I just think that maybe the boys would all benefit from spending less time together,” Nicole said. 

“Andy is very grateful for their friendship, though,” Michael said. “He hasn’t always had the most active social life, and—”

“He needs to focus on his studies,” Nicole said, a stubborn crease forming between her eyebrows.

“He’s _sixteen_ , Nicole! He needs friends.”

“I kind of agree with Nicole,” Dee cut in. The Laus stopped arguing, but they both looked tense and Michael had withdrawn his arm. “Not that Andy shouldn’t have friends, or that the boys are a bad influence on each other, but… I spoke with Mr. North, the counsellor. I do think that the boys should spend less time together, and Mr. North agrees with me. He said that it’s natural that they would have formed a tight bond in order to survive, but that part of reacclimating to normal life for them will be to set up normal boundaries again.”

“Is it that bad, though?” Karen said, nibbling on a biscuit. “What do you mean by ‘normal boundaries’?”

“They skipped class the other day to visit Jake when he was sick,” Dee said. “That goes beyond friendly concern, don’t you think? They sneaked out on Sunday to go look for Andy! I mean, I don’t fault them for being worried, and they did find him, but it feels like— like they think they only can trust each other anymore. If they knew something, why not share it with the police? Why take the matter into their own hands? We have to show them that they’re safe, now, and that they can rely on other people.”

“How can we do that?” Sarah asked. “They’ve already showed that they have no problem sneaking out when we ground them. I work two jobs, I can’t always be at home to make sure that Jake stays there. I’m also worried that if we forbid them to see each other, it’s only going to push them together. They’re teenagers; they’re just going to think we’re being unfair and unreasonable.”

“I’ll try to get Sam to talk to Mr. North,” Dee said. “Maybe you should do the same or find someone else for the boys to talk to. And maybe—we should encourage them to hang out with other people.”

Nicole and Michael had several suggestions on therapists that they’d apparently all tested on Andy. Karen recognized one of the names as someone who’d been recommended to her for Felix after his brother’s accident. She’d never followed through on the recommendation; there had been so much to worry about concerning Oscar at the time and they’d had no energy to spare for Felix. She hadn’t had time and energy for him in so long, and it was only when he’d gone missing that she’d realized how much she’d failed her son. Failed him so hard that he might have wanted to get away from her.

 _Dear God,_ she’d thought even though she hadn’t prayed in ages, certainly not since Oscar’s accident, _if you give me back my boy, I swear I will do right by him_.

“Karen? Are you okay?” Sarah asked.

Karen’s hand had shaken and she’d spilled some of her tea on the table. She met her friend’s concerned eyes and said, “Sorry, I’m just deep in thoughts.”

Sarah covered Karen’s hand with hers. “We’re all worried about the boys.”

“I know.” _But you’re not the one who might be responsible for all this._ Karen drew her hand back to herself. “Counselling sounds like a really good idea, Dee. We’ll just have to be there for them until they feel safe enough to open up.”

Their conversation moved on to lighter topics, but all the while Detective Murphy’s voice kept echoing in her mind, _How likely do you think it is, Mrs. Ferne, that Felix would have tried to run away?_

\---

Phoebe locked the door to her shop, peering through the glass for… she wasn’t sure what. Maybe for the boys to show up again, dragging another magical crisis to her doorstep. She really would like to box her other self’s ears for apparently giving them the idea that she was perfectly willing to help them at all time. Did she _look_ the caring type? She’d never met any teenager she hadn’t been able to scowl into bolting out of her shop before those four. 

And yet, if she was being completely honest with herself, she couldn’t deny that she’d been relieved when she heard that Andy Lau had come back home safe and sound. His melting-into-the-pond incident must have just been him messing with magic he didn’t understand and had nothing to do with the spell. She’d been worried, just a little, that the spell had backfired; it hadn’t been her purpose to hurt them and she would have felt awful if it had. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be the case, and if she managed to get what she wanted they would maybe never even realize what she’d done. 

In her backroom she got another look at the summoning instructions, committing them to memory. Her heart and stomach were fluttering with nervousness as her mind raced with the hundred things that could make it go wrong. She’d never actually _done_ magic before; she wasn’t sure she could do it right now, but the spell not working at all was probably the most harmless way this endeavour could fail. 

_Focus on the task at hand, Phoebe._

She lit up the red-orange candles on the table she’d prepared. She went to turn off all the electric lamps in the room and then proceeded to lit up the incense sticks. In the centre of the table she’d set a basin full of water, the one Alice had used for scrying. The smooth surface of the water reflected the little flames of the candles and Phoebe’s own, dimly-lit face. She looked scared, and Phoebe struggled to get control of her features until she wasn’t so transparent anymore. For what she was about to do, she needed to look confident. 

She drew a breath, letting it fill her lungs and send relaxing waves through her body. She was doing this; it was the first lead she had on Alice in ten years, she couldn’t afford _not_ to do this. Now or never. She started chanting the spell, keeping her eyes on the water in the scrying pool. She felt goose bumps bloom on the bare skin of her arms, but she didn’t know whether it was a sign that the spell was working, or just nerves. To finish the spell, she brought the piece of paper on which she’d written a sigil to one of the flames. The smoke darkened and the smell of burnt paper filled her nose. Then she waited, her heart hammering against her ribs. 

One minute. Two minutes.

“Well,” she said out loud, “ _that_ was certainly a bust.”

She moved away, wanting to turn on the lights again, but her eyes caught a flicker of movement on the water in the scrying pool.

“Calm down, Phoebe,” she said, drawing comfort from the sound of her own voice in the silent room. “It’s just your reflection. You’re getting spooked over nothing.”

The pale, fragrant smoke from the incense sticks twirled over the basin. Instead of lifting up, it was drifting _down_ as though it was drawn to the pool of water. Phoebe made herself keep so still that she barely dared breathing, and she observed the journey of the smoke as it gathered and spun until it was distinctively shaped as a face, with two dark holes as the eyes and a lower, bigger one as the mouth. Tiny flames sparked inside the eye-holes and Phoebe let out a gasp. 

_Who summons me?_

The mouth-hole was twisting but not really opening and closing in sync with the words, which sounded to Phoebe as though they’d been whispered directly into her mind. The voice was soft, enticing, but she wouldn’t have been able to give it any other descriptors; it wasn’t male or female, and didn’t have any of the specificities that made a human voice recognizable. 

“I’m Phoebe,” she said aloud, unsure whether the thing— _demon?_ —could read her mind. “Phoebe Hatley.”

_What do you desire?_

Phoebe clenched her fists. Whether this was a mistake or not, she’d gone too far to give up now.

“I want—"

\---

If they’d thought that things at school were bad for them before, then it was nothing compared to how it became after the whole Andy fiasco. Most of the people willing to give them the benefit of the doubt had none of it left after Andy had gone missing and popped up again over 24 hours. The rumour mill was going crazy: it was a tasteless prank, it was a call for attention, they were in a cult, Felix had been blackmailing the rest of them for some reason—that one seemed to have spawned from some of Detective Murphy’s most pointed questions to the kids who’d been at the party. Opinions were divided over the topic of whether Andy’s stunt at the party was something the four of them had been plotting together or if Andy was trying to split up from the group. 

“Felix’s probably holding you hostage,” Jake commented with a grin.

If he was trying to lighten the mood, then it wasn’t working on Felix, who cast Jake a glare. It wasn’t working on Andy either, who mostly looked anxious. His mum had straight up forbidden him to talk to the rest of them and he seemed to be feeling the heat of her wrath for each minute he spent with them. Still, he’d never once given any indication that he intended to listen to her. Sam was kind of impressed, to be honest; Andy was getting more and more willing to break the rules. That was one heart-warming thing, at least. 

They were all eating lunch on a bench outside, doing their best to ignore the frequent looks and murmurs aimed their way. Sam had tried talking to Mia a couple of times for the past few days, but it was hard to catch her on her own. More often than not these days, she was with Ellen, and Ellen’s glare had the killing power of a nuclear warhead. Sam wasn’t sure he liked this budding friendship, because Ellen didn’t look like she had any benefit of any doubt to hand out.

“She’s good at grudge-holding,” Felix had told him despondently. “She doesn’t give second chances.”

Mia wasn’t the grudgy kind, but it was a bet on which of them had the more influence on the other. For the moment, Ellen seemed to be winning. 

“Sam. Hey, Sam!”

Sam startled. “Yeah?”

“Man, were you paying attention to anything we were saying?” Jake asked him. 

“Sorry, I was just thinking—”

“—about Mia?” Jake finished for him with a smirk. 

“Well, yeah. Why won’t she give me a chance to explain myself? If I could show her—” As he spoke he waved a hand for emphasis and a gust of wind blew across the courtyard. Several students yelped as skirts and hair fluttered. 

“ _Sam!_ ” Felix hissed across Jake and Andy from where he sat on the other side of the bench. “Keep it in!”

“Oops?” Sam said with a sheepish shrug. No one seemed to have noticed it had come from him, so there was no real harm done. His power was the easiest one to rule out. “So, what were you talking about?”

“What happened to Jake and Andy,” Felix said. “Could be a coincidence, but we feel like it’s rather unlikely.”

‘We’ meant he and Andy—the two of them had been speculating like crazy since they’d saved Andy from his water spirit state. Sam tended to stay away from it, because those two could get super intense about speculating. 

“So, what, you think someone is targeting us or something?”

Jake rolled his eyes, signalling him that the question had already been covered extensively. Nevertheless, Andy seemed not to mind explaining again. “Jake didn’t react to Felix’s curse breaker, the other day,” he said. “Also, it seems rather odd for a curse. Each time it’s been related to our powers somehow. My hypothesis is that our powers are reacting to the binding spell we cast at Phoebe’s the other day.”

“Phoebe didn’t seem to think it would harm us,” Felix said. 

“Phoebe said that she’s never seen powers like ours,” Andy objected. “She could’ve got it wrong.”

Jake gave Sam a look that said ‘ _look what you’ve done_ ’, and Sam assumed that Felix and Andy had already gone over this argument at length. They kept bickering for a moment, but Sam let it wash over him. It wasn’t the bad kind of arguing and he didn’t mind it. 

“Even if it’s not a curse,” Felix was saying when Sam started paying attention again, “it feels like someone or something is trying to weaken us. We’re stronger together, but since we’ve been back we’ve spent a lot of our time with one of us down and the other three scrambling to try and save him. If we’d been attacked then—”

“But we haven’t been,” Andy said.

“Maybe whoever they are have lacked the opportunity,” Felix said. “Maybe the talisman has been protecting us.”

“Then it’s only half doing its job,” Jake said. “I could have done without that whole turning-into-clay interlude.”

Felix frowned, apparently taking Jake’s criticism of the talisman as a personal attack. “I’ll work on strengthening the elemental protection,” he said, sounding a bit miffed. 

“I’ll help,” Andy said. “By the way, Sam, aren’t you going to be late for your appointment?”

“What appointment?”

“The one your mum got you with Mr. North,” Jake said. He elbowed Sam in the ribs, smiling sardonically at him. “Don’t try to pretend that you’ve forgotten about it.”

“It just skipped my mind,” Sam said. It honestly had, and he wished his friends hadn’t reminded him of it. “Ugh, I don’t wanna go. He’s going to ask me to talk about my feelings. I don’t want to talk about my feelings! I don’t even want to _have_ feelings.”

“Be careful about what you tell him,” Felix told him sternly. “We’re in enough trouble as it is.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Of course, I’m not stupid. Well, see you later, I guess.”

He dragged his feet all the way to Mr. North’s office, cursing his mother under his breath. He loved his mum—she was kind of the best—and he knew she just worried about him, but she really shouldn’t. Or, well, she _should_ , but not over the things she thought she had to worry about. Talking to Mr. North wasn’t going to solve the problems of the mysterious elemental attacks against his friends. It wasn’t going to make everyone at school stop thinking that they were freaks, and it wasn’t going—Maybe it could have helped with his problem about Mia, actually, but it wasn’t like Sam could explain the situation to the counsellor in all its complexity. And something told Sam that the man wouldn’t be happy to hear about his girl troubles. 

“Hey, watch where you’re going!” someone exclaimed.

Sam blinked, startled out of his thoughts, and looked at the guy glaring at him. He was a scrawny blond dude, not anyone that Sam knew by name, and Sam wondered what he’d done to offend him on a personal level. 

“What’s your problem?” he asked, which made the guy’s face scrunch up in anger. 

“My problem is that you almost _ran_ into me! You know, you can’t walk around like you own the school anymore, mate.”

It was stupid, but that last part still hurt. “I didn’t walk into you,” Sam said. He’d been deep in thoughts, but he would have felt it if he had. “Did I?”

“No, but—” Now the guy looked a bit confused. “You _almost_ did. Your shoulder was so close and I could swear that—”

“Look, dude, I’m going to be late, so let’s just say I’m sorry for almost bumping into you. My bad, really.”

The guy was still griping about it when Sam walked away, but at least he didn’t try to pick up a fight. Sam didn’t get what his problem was—why make such a big deal of something that hadn’t happened? By the time he got to Mr. North’s office, the incident had soured his mood even further and he had no patience for Mr. North’s speech on how his office was ‘a safe space’ and ‘really, Sam could tell him anything.’

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, “but I think my mum is worrying over nothing. I’m fine, I don’t need to talk about anything. This is just wasting both of our times.”

Mr. North shifted in the chair he’d set facing the sofa he’d had Sam sit on. Sam had to admit that the sofa was pretty comfy. He’d never been in Mr. North’s office before, and it was a rather nice room. The sun flowed inside through the window at Sam’s back, warming the nape of his neck. Green plants framed the sofa, and Mr. North had decorated the walls with pastel landscapes. Sam’s attention was caught by one that depicted a field of wild grass and rocky formations, with a tree line in the background. A thin trail made its sinuous way across the field, splitting the painting in two. The blue sky was hazy with vaporous clouds.

“Sam?”

“Hmm?”

“Where were you right now? You looked lost in thoughts.”

“Oh, I was just looking at your pastels. Who made them?”

“My daughter,” Mr. North said. “She’s an artist.”

“She’s pretty good,” Sam said, and Mr. North let a proud smile escape him. 

“Thanks,” he said. “You like drawing, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Sam said warily. He wasn’t opposed to talking about drawing, but worried it was just a trick to get him to talk about his feelings. “How did you know?”

“Your mother told me.”

How much had his mum talked to Mr. North? He was starting to think that _she_ was the one who needed counselling. Now if only she would leave him out of it!

“Yeah, my mum paints too, so she kind of got me into it. Your daughter looks talented.”

“She’ll be glad to hear that you think so.” Mr. North paused, crossing his legs and weaving his fingers over the top knee. “I know you’re not happy about this appointment, Sam, but your mother is very worried about you. She doesn’t think you’re as fine as you say you are, and she could be wrong, mind you—but coming back after two weeks lost in the woods must have been challenging.”

“Not really, no,” Sam said.

“So everything is just as it was before?”

“Yeah.”

“I have a hard time believing that, Sam. Give me a little credit, here. I _work_ in this school. I know that you have completely changed social circles.”

“Well, that’s because my former friends are being dicks about—well, about everything. I think maybe they’ve always been dicks, but I just didn’t realize it before.”

“So now you’re spending most of your time with Jake, Felix and Andy.”

Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “And that’s a bad thing?”

“I’m not saying it is. It’s completely normal that you would have bonded with them. After what you’ve been through together, it’s only natural. You could only rely on each other, after all.”

Sam’s mind flashed to the moments they’d spend at the hideout, fighting off loneliness with chatter, scavenging for foods and furniture, trying to survive an actual _demon_. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m glad I wasn’t on my own.”

“But now that you’re back, you have other people you can rely on. Your parents, your brothers, other friends.”

“I don’t have a lot of other friends, right now.”

“What about your family? What about the police, when Andy Lau went missing?”

“Hey, we didn’t do anything to Andy, okay?” Sam said hotly.

Mr. North raised his hands. “I’m not saying you did,” he said. “But why not let the police handle it? Your parents are concerned by the fact that you thought you had to handle it yourself.”

And here Sam saw where that conversation was going to hit a roadblock. Because of course the police _couldn’t_ have handled Andy getting turned into a water spirit. They would have just kept looking for him in the woods without knowing that he was right under their noses. But Sam couldn’t tell Mr. North about that, or about the magic, the elemental powers or the alternate universe. He would think that Sam was severely delusional, like what had happened to Jake in the other universe.

 _You’re wrong, Mr. North,_ he thought to himself. _We can_ only _rely on each other._ Even Phoebe was a shaky ally at best. Their own parents were turning against them, and it didn’t change anything that they only had the best of intentions.

“You’re right,” he said. “We should have let the police deal with it. We were just worried about Andy.”

“And that’s understandable. But in order to readjust to a normal life, you need to—”

Mr. North blabbered a little longer on the subject, but Sam had tuned him out. The man had no advice to give that would help Sam with his problems. Instead of listening he focused on the pastel landscapes again, flowery fields, dark forbidding mountains and pretty lakes. The artist had a sure hand and an eye for colour. Sam would really rather be talking to her than to her father. 

“Sam, are you listening to me?”

This time it took Sam a moment to focus on Mr. North talking to him. His friends liked to call him a scatter-brain, but right now it felt almost literal, like his thoughts were fluttery butterflies that he had to catch one by one before his mind could feel whole again. 

“Yeah,” he said, pushing himself to stand up. It felt important all of a sudden that he would get away from Mr. North and his inquisitive ways as soon as possible. “I have to go. Sorry.”

“We still have some time left,” Mr. North said. 

“I just remembered I—promised a classmate we’d work on a project at the library.” He was kind of proud of himself for mustering enough brain power to come up with this excuse. “I don’t want to stand her up. We’re due in a few days.”

Mr. North contemplated him in silence for a few seconds, but fortunately didn’t try to pressure Sam into staying. “All right,” he said. “We can decide on a later appointment. I’ll make time for you. Sam, I really think you need to talk about what’s going on with you.”

Mr. North held out a hand for Sam to shake, but when Sam tried to take it he somehow managed to miss it. “Uh,” he said, looking at his hand with a feeling of betrayal. 

“Is something wrong?” Mr. North said. “You look pale. Maybe you should sit down again for a moment.”

“No, no, I really need to go.”

In the hallway he walked quickly, although he wasn’t sure where to go, feeling like he was walking through a dream. He looked at his hand again, trying to figure out what was wrong with it, if his hand was even the problem. It didn’t hurt, but it felt a little strange, prickling with pins and needles. 

“Hey, watch out!”

This time he looked up just in time to see himself about to run into another student, a girl he knew from History class. Kristy or Kirsten or something like that. He saw the moment when his shoulder should have bumped into hers, but didn’t. She stepped aside, cast him a dirty look and walked away; it didn’t seem like she’d seen it too—she hadn’t seen the way that Sam’s shoulder hadn’t connected with hers not because she’d moved away in time, but because for a moment it’d looked flimsy, insubstantial, almost like mist, and the girl had literally _walked through him_.

“Am I a ghost?” he asked out loud. 

A couple of guys from the footy team walked past him at that moment and looked at him sideways, laughing at him. 

“Losing it, Conte?” one of them said and then commented snidely to his friend, “That guy’s crazy.”

Sam would have shot back something about the pink still visible in their hair, but he was too preoccupied with the fact that although he was apparently not a ghost, there was still something very wrong with him. He looked closely at his hand, at his arm, but he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He walked to the row of lockers lined up against the wall and gingerly reached out to touch one of them. The metal felt cool and solid, and his hand didn’t go through. But he hadn’t imagined what had happened in Mr. North’s office, or with the girl he'd run into just now, had he? The same had probably happened with the guy who’d got angry at him right before his appointment. So why was his hand normal now? 

“Sam, are you all right?” 

Sam whirled around, heart leaping in his chest. “Oh, hey, Mia.”

Angels started singing in his head at the sight of her looking fine and pretty in her school uniform. She wore her hair in a ponytail today, wild strands curling in a halo around her head. She hadn’t talked to him in days and he was delighted as ever to see her, but he did wish that she’d have better timing.

“Are you all right?” she repeated, an adorable frown of concern creasing the space between her eyebrows. She was worried about him!

“All right? Yes, yes, I’m fine. What about you?”

“You were staring very intently at this locker.”

“Oh, I was just really deep in thought. Thinking. You know, about stuff.”

“Stuff,” she echoed, then sighed. “Of course you can’t tell me about this ‘stuff.’”

“I—” 

This wasn’t the moment to have that discussion again, because he wasn’t really okay even though he was pretending very hard that he was. He wasn’t turning invisible, since Mia could see him and talk to him, or going all misty again, but he could still feel that something was wrong. He had a hard time focusing on what Mia was telling him, and it wasn’t just because of the way the sunlight from the window at the end of the hallway made the finer hair on her head shine, or because her skin looked really smooth, or because of the fact that he could smell the coconut from the body lotion she used and it was making him horny as well as kind of hungry—

“Sam!”

“Yes?”

“You weren’t listening to me, were you?” She didn’t sound angry so much as resigned, like she hadn’t been expecting any better from him. 

“No, that’s not—” 

He cut himself off, because saying that he’d been listening to her would be a lie, and she would see through it. But it wasn’t because he didn’t want to! Even if he could explain what was happening in a way she could understand, _she_ was the one who wasn’t listening. The only proof he had to give her to support his story was his ability to manipulate air, and if he were to try and demonstrate it for her she would easily dismiss him. He needed one of the others with him, preferably Felix, whose power was the coolest. _I need Felix. He’ll know how to fix whatever is wrong with me._

“I need to go,” he said to Mia.

“Of course you do,” she said in that same resigned tone.

Impulsively, he leaned forward to kiss her forehead. When he stepped away he saw that she was looking at him with wide eyes, lips slightly parted. He reined in the urge to do more and said, “One day, I’ll be able to make you understand. I can’t do it now, but I will. I promise.”

She looked about to say something, but he didn’t want to be having this conversation now so he turned on his heels and trotted up the hallway, following his sense of where Felix was. When he found him at the library with Andy, he didn’t have to open his mouth before they were asking him what was wrong.

“It’s, um. It’s a little hard to explain,” he said. He dropped on a chair next to Andy, across Felix, and it was a relief when he didn’t end up on the floor. “I think I’m, like, disappearing, I guess?”

“Disappearing,” Felix said, as though he needed to repeat the last word Sam had said in order to understand him. “You don’t look like you’re disappearing to me.”

“We can still see you,” Andy said. “But maybe we can only see you because of the bond. Do you mean that you’re invisible to other people?”

“Uh, no, that’s not exactly it. People can still see me. I was talking to Mia right now. It’s just—” He told them about not-bumping into that guy, about doing it again with that girl from his History class, about being unable to shake Mr. North’s hand. “It’s like on and off, but I’m sure it’s happening. I’m not making this up. It’s like I’m turning into—mist, maybe?—or into _air_. Oh my god, I’m turning into air!”

He was distracted from his moment of panicked realization when he saw the look on Felix’s face. What was strange about it was that Felix wasn’t looking at him, but at Andy. Except, stranger still, that he wasn’t looking at Andy’s face, but rather in direction of his shoulder. When Sam turned toward Andy to check what Felix was reacting to, he saw that Andy was staring at him. 

“Guys?” he said tentatively.

“We believe you,” Felix said.

“You just waved through my shoulder,” Andy explained. “It looks—like it’s happening when you’re not really focusing on what you’re doing. That was also what triggered your power at the beginning.”

“I also have a hard time focusing,” Sam said. He saw Felix’s lips twitch and he amended, “Harder than usual.”

“Airhead,” Andy said, but not meanly. “Three times is a pattern,” he added at the intention of Felix.

“I know,” Felix said. He rubbed at his forehead, frowning and squinting at the table like he was trying to read very fine prints. “If it’s anything like what happened to you and Jake, then it’s going to get much worse very quickly.”

“But you can help me, right?” Sam asked, not liking how troubled Felix sounded. “You’re going to turn me back to normal like you did with Jake and Andy.”

“We’ll try what I did to fix Jake. If it doesn’t work, we’ll go to Phoebe,” Felix said. He looked up at Sam, a look of stony determination on his face. “We’ll figure it out, Sam.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam said, nodding along; already he felt a little better about the whole situation. “I’m not worried.”

Felix blinked, then smiled faintly at him. “That’s a little more faith in me than is warranted, but I’ll take it. Someone text Jake and tell him to join us; I’ll look for the spell I used before.”

Jake joined them quickly and they went looking for an empty classroom. Sam followed his friends or at least tried to, because it was becoming harder and harder to focus even on something as simple as that. His mind kept wandering; he thought about Mia being worried about him, about Andy’s parents trying to keep him from seeing them, about Mia not believing his story about the alternate universe and what he could do to bring it up again, about what Mr. North had told him during their appointment, about Mia’s legs, about the pastel landscapes in Mr. North’s office—

“Hey, Sam.”

A heavy hand dropped on his shoulder and Sam jumped. It was Jake, looking at him with concern; Felix and Andy, who’d been walking ahead of them, had stopped too and watched Sam with the same expression.

“Feels like we lost you for a moment, mate,” Jake said. 

Sam tried to swallow, but his mouth and throat were too dry. The pressure of Jake’s hand on his shoulder felt like the only thing keeping him from floating away, as he didn’t really have any sense of the rest of his body. He wasn’t numb, not exactly, because numbness came with a notion of weight and he felt weightless. 

“Can you guys tell me whether I still have feet?” he asked, sounding breathless and squeaky. 

Felix and Andy’s eyes both dropped down to floor level. The hallway was deserted, meaning that they probably should be in class right now, but Sam’s recollection of his own timetable was full of holes. His _mind_ was full of holes, and wind was blowing through them and scattering his few stray thoughts. 

“Your feet look a little, um, see-through,” Andy said.

“Okay, okay, that’s great,” Sam said. He was starting to hyperventilate, feeling, ironically, like the air around him was in short supply.

“Hey, hey, calm down, man,” Jake said. “We’re not letting anything happen to you. We’ll fix this in no time.”

There was something very grounding about Jake’s voice, and Sam clung to it like to a lifeline. Maybe it was an elemental thing, Jake being Earth and Sam being Air, or maybe it was just something about Jake. 

“Let’s move,” Felix said shortly. “Before someone sees us and notices _this_.”

“Keep talking,” Sam told Jake. “About anything. Just keep talking.”

Jake talked, although Sam couldn’t tell about what exactly. The sound of his voice was like a red thread that Sam was following as they walked through the hallways. Sam wasn’t sure whether he was walking or floating above ground like a soap bubble, but in any case he was moving. A door opened, then slammed shut. Someone pushed Sam down on a chair but he somehow found himself on the floor, and then suddenly the room was spinning and the ceiling jumped at him.

“Close that window!”

Sam felt like something slapped him in the face and he was down again, not hurting anywhere but feeling dizzy, wishing that he had a body solid enough that it would let him throw up. 

Jake’s face appeared in his vision field. “Sam, you okay? You were almost blown away through the window!”

“Keep him down, Jake,” Felix said. “Don’t let him fly away again.”

Jake put his two hands on Sam’s shoulders, anchoring him, giving him substance. Sam wanted to raise his arms so he could cling to Jake’s wrists but he wasn’t sure where his arms even were. _I’m going to disappear,_ he thought. _Or maybe just float away, molecules scattered to the wind._ For a moment the idea actually didn’t feel scary, maybe even a little nice. Being unfettered, free and flying. No worries, no responsibilities. But nothing else either: no more skate-boarding, no more drawing. No more hanging out with his friends or with his family. He wouldn’t ever be able to make it up to Mia. 

“Don’t—don’t let me go,” he stammered to Jake. 

“Don’t worry, man,” Jake replied, fingers digging in his shoulders. “I’ve got you.”

“Divinity of the elements, I invoke thee,” Felix started chanting. Sam closed his eyes, trying to relax and let Felix operate his—literal—magic. He shut them tighter, straining to keep himself together. 

“What’re you doing to him?”

_Mia?_

She shouldn’t be thinking about this. Shouldn’t be thinking about _him_. She’d been debating all week on how to go about breaking up with him, because she couldn’t keep the ambiguous status quo going. Either they were together, or they weren’t. It wasn’t right to let him hope. But when she’d seen the confused, lost look on his face earlier, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from going to him, just as she couldn’t stop from worrying now. 

“What’s the matter?” Ellen whispered to her, nudging her elbow. “You haven’t taken any note for the past five minutes.”

The only positive outcome from the weirdness surrounding the boys’ return was probably Mia and Ellen getting closer. They’d spent a surprising amount of time together lately, talking about everything except the boys and their odd behaviour. Once you got past her prickly exterior, Ellen was very funny, albeit in a sharp and merciless way. She was so different from Mia that it was fascinating, and one thing that could be said for her was that her company was never boring. 

“Sorry,” Mia said, looking sheepishly at the blank page of her notebook. “I’m a bit distracted.”

“Distracted by what?”

“It’s—”

 _Nothing_ , was what she meant to say, but the words got stuck in her throat when she caught movement through the opening in the classroom’s door. She was pretty sure that she’d seen Felix and Andy, followed by Jake and Sam, just walk by. The look on Sam’s face had been—panicked, was the closest word she could find to describe it. Mia’s heart started to beat faster in sympathy. 

“Can I go to the toilets, sir?” she heard herself ask before she even had the time to fully form the thought.

“Mia, what’s going on?” Ellen whispered furiously to her.

The teacher nodded his assent and Mia stood up, ignoring Ellen’s question. As she reached the door she heard Ellen ask their teacher if she could go too, but she was in the hallway before she could hear the answer. She couldn’t see the boys anywhere as she came out of the classroom, so she followed the direction she’d seen them take.

Footstep pounded behind her and Ellen popped up at her elbow. “What got into you, Mia? What happened?”

“The boys just walked by the classroom. There’s something wrong, I just know it.”

Ellen stopped dead. “Don’t tell me we’re running after them. I thought we’d agreed that we were done with that. No more chasing after stupid boys.”

“We’re not—” Mia faltered, trying to think of a way to spin this to Ellen that wouldn’t make her look pathetic. She worried about Sam, that was undeniable, but that wasn’t the only reason she wanted to find the boys. “Something’s going on with them. I want to know what it is and you wanted to know it too, remember?”

“They’re jerks, is what’s going on,” Ellen said, crossing her arms.

“There must be something else to it. And we’re always going to wonder what it is if we don’t try to figure it out.”

Mia flashed back to the last time they’d had this argument, when their roles had been reversed. She could see that throwing back to Ellen her own arguments was having its effect, and she wasn’t surprised when Ellen sighed, rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, fine. Their secret better be something interesting.”

They walked down the hallway, then Mia took a random turn right. Where would she go if she needed away from inquiring eyes and ears? She asked the question out loud and Ellen answered, “The old classrooms. That’s where Felix would go, at least.”

Mia let Ellen take the lead, realizing that her friend had a more in-depth knowledge of the school than she had, despite having spent just as many years there. Ellen explained that she and Felix had always been looking for places to be away from other students, and it made Mia feel embarrassed and shameful for some reason. Their respective positions at school was another thing that separated them, but Mia had never stop to think about it before.

The empty hallways echoed eerily with their footsteps and the muffled fragments of lessons from the classrooms they walked past. Then it was silent as they reached the classrooms that weren’t used anymore, which made it easier for Mia and Ellen to hear the boys’ voices and let themselves be guided by them. They were shouting something urgent but indistinct, and Mia and Ellen concertedly started walking faster. What she expected to see when they found them, Mia wasn’t even sure, so she pushed the door open without giving herself time to hesitate. 

The first thing she noticed was Felix, standing impossibly tall with a black-covered notebook open in his hands. Then she saw Sam on the floor, lying in the alley between the two rows of desks, pinned down there by Jake’s hands on his shoulder.

A surge of protectiveness shot through her. “What’re you doing to him?”

Felix had been saying something when she entered, but he cut himself off. “What are you two doing here?” he asked. 

There was something off about his voice, but he wasn’t Mia’s focus. She lurched forward in Sam’s direction, but Andy, who she hadn’t noticed standing by the door, stepped in her way with his hands thrust out.

“Wait, Mia!”

“What’s going on, Felix?” Ellen asked authoritatively. “What are you doing to Sam?”

“We’re _helping_ him,” Felix said, sounding frustrated. 

“Please, let him finish!” Andy said, but he cringed at the withering look that Ellen cast him. 

“Sam!” Mia called, trying to see him over Andy’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Mia?” Sam said. He sounded drugged. “Hey, Mia!”

Ellen fished her phone out of her pocket. “Jake, I swear, if you don’t let him go, I will—”

“Felix, it’s getting worse!” Jake said. “Just do it!”

“Divinity of the elements, I summon thee,” Felix said, his voice taking on an oddly rhythmic tone, almost like he was intoning a prayer. “Earth, water, air, fire—”

“Is that a joke?” Ellen asked, high-pitched with incredulity and annoyance. “That’s not even remotely funny, Felix.”

Sam moaned and Mia called for him, “Sam! Let me through,” she said to Andy, trying to stare him down. “This is ridiculous.”

“You just have to let Felix finish,” Andy said pleadingly before glancing at Felix, who was still chanting.

 _They’ve gone mental_ , Mia thought. They didn’t seem to be joking; they were tense, all of them dead serious. Even though Felix was only sprouting nonsense about elements, the atmosphere was heavy and solemn, like something important was going on. Sam’s pitiful whimpers were increasing in intensity.

“Andy,” she tried again, but Ellen lost patience and she unceremoniously shoved Andy aside, saying, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Jake looked up when they approached. “Mia,” he said. “It’s not what—”

“Let him go!” Mia wasn’t used to yelling at people, but she tried to sound as demanding as Ellen. “Just—”

She reached out for Sam, trying to touch his arm and to shake him out of whatever altered state he was in. He was still moaning, even though Mia could see now that Jake wasn’t doing anything to him but holding him down, so she was even more convinced that he was drugged. But, when her fingers should have met solid flesh, she felt nothing; instead, she looked in fascinated horror as they went right through Sam’s arm, Sam’s tanned skin looking suddenly mist-like, almost as if he were an illusion that had started fading. She gasped, taking a step back.

“What the—”

“—don’t let any evil remain,” Felix said, then fell silent. 

Mia heard Ellen shout, “Felix!” and she instinctively turned toward the cry. Felix was slumped between Ellen and Andy, both too short to be able to hold him comfortably, his head lolling to the side. 

“What’s wrong with him?” Ellen asked as she and Andy guided him to a chair.

“The spell has exhausted him,” Andy said, looking over Felix with a frown.

Sam groaned, and Mia focused on him again. Jake was helping him sit up and Mia tentatively tried to touch his shoulder again. He was solid now, nothing of the strange misty effect left, and Mia was starting to think that she’d imagined it. The rush of adrenaline she’d just felt was ebbing, leaving her feeling drained and a little stupid. Had she got worked up over nothing? 

Sam blinked, looking so adorably confused that for a moment Mia forgot where they were and what had happened, like Sam was just waking up from a nap, needing a minute to get his bearings. “Hey,” he said to her, his lips stretching into a slow smile, delighted as ever to see her. He looked down at his hands and raised them to his face, examining them closely.

“You’re solid again, man,” Jake told him, gently bumping a fist against his shoulder. “It worked.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Felix?”

Jake grimaced. “It takes a lot out of him.”

Mia had watched the conversation with the uneasy sense that she was missing half of it. Sam and Jake had been friends even before the whole lost-in-the-forest affair, but this was a level of complicity she’d never witnessed between them. Whatever had just happened, whatever they’d been doing since they came back, they were in it together and Mia was watching from the outside in growing incomprehension. 

“You okay to stand up?” Jake asked Sam.

“Think so.”

Mia and Jake helped Sam on his feet. He wobbled a little, leaning against her more heavily than on Jake, and she had the feeling that it was at least partly intentional. She didn’t try to sort out whether she found it cute or annoying, because she needed to know more about what was going on before she decided on a stance. Ellen and Andy had sat Felix on a chair; when Mia, Jake and Sam joined them, Felix looked up at Sam and smiled. It was a small smile, wan and exhausted, but it held relief and a tinge of genuine affection. Mia didn’t know him well, but like Ellen, he’d always seemed to be scowling when she caught him in her periphery. Seeing him look so open was a strange experience. 

“You okay?” Felix asked. “No lingering effect?”

Sam laughed and slapped his shoulder. “Good as new, man! What about you?”

Felix shrugged. “Oh, you know.” His eyes flickered to Mia, then to Ellen. “I’m sure you must feel a little confused—”

“What _was_ that?” Ellen exploded. “What’s that crap about a spell? What were you doing to Sam?”

“Helping him,” Felix said tensely. “God, Ellen, do you really believe that I would _hurt_ him? Is that what you think of me?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore!”

“Why couldn’t I touch Sam?” Mia asked. “Why could I see _through his arm_?”

Ellen stopped glaring at Felix long enough to cast Mia a confused look. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said: it was like Sam was fading, or, or _dissolving_.” Sensing Ellen’s disbelief, she grew more insistent. “I know what I saw! You have to trust me.”

But Ellen didn’t even trust Felix, who had been her best friend for years. She had only started to be friendly with Mia for about a week, so why would she have more faith in her?

“Mia,” Ellen asked uncertainly, “are you all right?”

“Okay,” Sam said, waving a hand in agitation. “I’ve had enough of this. Felix, _show_ them.”

“I can’t,” Felix said, mouth set in an unhappy pinch. “I’m all tapped out.”

“I’m not exactly in my element here,” Jake said with an apologetic shrug.

“Everybody just waits,” Andy said, “I’ll be right back.”

He left the room in a rush, with the door slightly ajar behind him. Mia and Ellen looked at each other, Ellen’s expression leery and closed off. The bell ringing made all of them jump, breaking through the tension. Jake rolled a shoulder and said, “Should we get back to class or what?”

“I don’t have any energy left for class,” Felix said. He held a hand out and Jake took it, helping him haul himself up on his feet. “I think I’ll go to Arcane Lane see Phoebe, ask her about—” He motioned vaguely with his hand, but Sam and Jake looked like they got it.

“Stop being so cryptic!” Ellen said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Is it a cult? Is it drugs? _Tell_ me what’s—”

The door creaked as Andy pushed it open, seemingly with his elbow because his hands were occupied with—

“What the fuck,” Ellen said in a deadpan voice.

Andy was holding a blob of water. Or, more accurately, a blob of water was floating in the space between Andy’s two hands. Andy wasn’t touching the water, but from the focused, strained expression on his face it was obvious that he was the one holding it there. How he was doing it, Mia had no idea, but it seemed undisputable. 

Ellen, though, was apparently still sceptical. She walked over to Andy and wiggled a finger in the space between Andy’s hand and the water.

“Uhhh, Ellen, please,” Andy said. Drops of sweat pearled on his forehead. “It demands a lot of focus, so if you could not—”

“You’re doing this,” Ellen said. Transfixed, she wasn’t diverting her eyes from the water. “ _You_ ’re doing this. How is it possible?”

“Andy can control water,” Felix said, some irritation seeping into his voice. “Jake controls earth, Sam controls air. I control fire. We got those powers after we came back from the other universe, just as I explained to you.”

“Well, excuse me for not swallowing just any strange story about alternate universes and elemental powers!”

“You could have just trusted me!”

“Okay,” Mia said, stepping between them before the argument could get out of hand. “Calm down, you two. Felix, I didn’t believe Sam either when he tried to tell me the truth. And I’m sorry,” she added for Sam’s benefit. “It was just—so strange. Even now, even with what I’ve seen, I’m not quite sure I believe it.”

The water escaped Andy and splashed over his shoes. “Yeah,” he said with a disgruntled expression. “If I hadn’t lived through the whole story I don’t think I would believe it either. Discovering that magic is real was a great shock.”

“Andy is the biggest sceptic there is,” Felix said, his unhappy expression softening. He sighed, dropping his eyes. “All right. Ellen—I’m sorry that… I’m sorry that everything that happened has come between us. I’m sorry that I let it. I should have been better at explaining the truth to you, I should have—”

Ellen held up a hand and he shut up. “I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said with a marked reluctance that she mellowed with a half-smile. “For not believing you.”

A moment passed with Ellen and Felix lost in silent contemplation of each other, no one daring to break the moment until Jake said, “Okay, it’s nice that everyone is on the same page now, but we need to decide what to do now. Are we going back to class, are we going to Phoebe’s?”

“I don’t think we should miss any more classes,” Mia said. “You guys are in enough trouble already.”

“Agreed,” Andy said with fervour. “We can go the Phoebe’s later. We should have at least a few more hours of respite before anything else happens.” For some reason he directed a look at Felix when saying that last part. 

As they left the classroom Sam locked steps with Mia, speaking softly to her ear. “Does this all mean that you’re not breaking up with me anymore?”

She glanced at him, surprised that he’d figured it out. Sure, she’d been obviously avoiding him for a while now, but Sam could be obtuse. She turned the question in her head: did she want to break up with him? Now that she knew that he’d tried to tell her the truth, she felt a little ashamed for not giving him the benefit of the doubt. He was giving her a bright, hopeful smile that made her heart melt like snow under the sun. The memory of his moans of distress earlier were still haunting her. With Ellen, she’d tried to pretend that she didn’t care about him anymore, but now she knew it had been silly to lie to herself.

“We’re not breaking up,” she said and held out her hand to him. 

He beamed at her and took her hand, threading his fingers through her own. The weight of his warm palm against hers was almost enough to make her forget that she’d just plunged head first into a world of weirdness and magic.


	5. Chapter 5

_Logically, I’m next_ , was the thought that badgered him all afternoon. He’d gone back to class at Andy and Mia’s insistence, but he wasn’t registering most of it. His head pounded, his joints ached, and it was all he could do to keep himself upright and not slump on his desk. The magic was taking more and more out of him, and it probably didn’t help that he spent more time at night researching than sleeping these days. If it got worse—if he was the next one to fall prey to his own power, as was likely—then he would probably need to hand over the spell casting to one of the others. He didn’t like the idea, because magic was _his_ thing, but if what had happened to Jake, Andy and Sam happened to him too then he wouldn’t have a choice. 

At least, Ellen was talking to him again; it was the only silver lining to the dark, thundering cloud that threatened them. They were walking back home together for the first time since he’d come back and Felix didn’t dare say anything for fear of breaking this insane struck of good luck.

“You look awful,” she said.

He laughed, his heart squeezing hard with fondness. “You sure know how to make a guy feel better,” he said.

“I’m serious, you look sick.” 

She raised a hand like she was going to feel his forehead and he batted it away. “I’m not sick, just tired. And what with the nurse routine, Ellen? This isn’t like you.”

She clenched her jaw, looking away. “Well, I’m sorry for caring.”

“No, I’m—” He cut himself off, hating that he still felt so out of balance with Ellen. He wished things could fall back in place and be normal again with a snap of his fingers, but he’d left normal so far behind that it was just a speck in the horizon. “Spell casting demands a lot of energy, that’s why I’m so knackered. I’ll be fine after a nap.”

They walked a few more meters in silence before Ellen asked, sounding casual again, “What happened to Sam, by the way? Mia said she saw him _disappear._ ”

“It’s happened to Jake and Andy too. It’s like—their powers turned against them or something. When Andy went missing, it was because he’d transformed into a water spirit. I’ve managed to fix them every time, but I—”

“You don’t know what’s causing it.” She slid a sideway glance at him. “And you could be the next on the list. You said your power was fire?”

“Yeah. I’m too exhausted to show you right now, but I could do it later, if. If you’re interested.”

Her smile held the sharp mischief that he’d missed so much. “That’s pretty goth of you,” she said, and he couldn’t help but smile back.

“I know, right?”

Back in his room, he stumbled to his couch and crashed hard, sucked immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep. He woke up groggy to the persistent sound of his ringing phone; by the time he could find it where it had slipped between the cushions of his couch, it had stopped ringing, but he could see that Jake had called. He rubbed his face, trying to will the cobwebs out of his aching brain. He’d slept soundly but he didn’t feel much better for it.

He called Jake back. “Hey, you tried to call me?” he said when Jake picked up, his voice gravelly from sleep.

“Well, we said that we would meet at Phoebe’s, but you’re still at home, aren’t you? Are you okay? You sound—”

“You’re at Phoebe’s. Wait, what time is it?” Felix checked the time on his phone. “ _Shit_. Shit, sorry, Jake, I fell asleep. Be there in ten.”

Grabbing his bag he rushed out of his room, almost tripping on his feet. He could tell that only Jake and Sam were at Arcane Lane and that Andy was still at home, not that it was surprising; since he’d gone missing again, Andy’s parents had become their son’s gaolers. Felix couldn’t blame them, but without Andy they were at a handicap and it sat uneasily with him. He arrived at the magic shop out of breath, his legs weak and shaky. Jake and Sam watched him with wry looks as he leaned with his elbows on his knees.

“You need to build up some endurance, man,” Jake said. “I should have you run laps.”

Felix looked up and glared at him through his bangs. “Don’t you dare,” he said. “Is Phoebe there?”

“We knocked,” Sam said, “but she’s not answering. The door is locked.”

Felix straightened up, his joints creaking like an old tree. He went to pound on the door, uncaring if it put Phoebe in a foul mood. “Phoebe! Open the door! It’s Felix!” He stopped, pressed an ear against the door, and started knocking again once he heard a shuffling sound from inside the shop. “I know you’re there. Open up, it’s important!”

The door cracked open and Phoebe’s face appeared in the gap. “What do you want?” she snapped.

“We need—” Felix trailed off at the sight of Phoebe. She looked even worse than he felt, her face gaunt and swallow, her eyes shadowed, her hair messy and dull. “We—need—help. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Phoebe said. There was something oddly clipped about her voice, like she was forcing the words out. “You have to leave now.”

She started closing the door but Felix thrust a foot inside to keep it open. “Phoebe, wait—” 

He grabbed for her wrist, but as soon as his fingers brushed against her cold, clammy skin a chill overcame him, draining him of every ounce of strength he had left. He let go of her and stumbled backward, dizzy and nauseous. If Jake and Sam hadn’t caught him he would have crumpled over. 

“What—”

Phoebe had retreated behind the closed door. Felix stared at it dumbly, trying to piece together what he’d just seen and felt. For a second there, when he’d touched Phoebe, he’d seen her eyes flash midnight black, as if dark ink had been pooled into her irises. The awful chill that had overwhelmed him was still clinging to his bones and when he tried to push away from Sam and Jake, the world tilted on its axis and he had to cling to Sam’s arm to keep upright.

“Whoa, easy,” Jake said. “Maybe we should find a place for you to sit down.”

Felix let his friends drag him away from the shop and to a rock that was embedded in the pavement. They sat him on it and both crouched to his level, looking at him in concern.

“You look sick,” Jake said, just as Ellen had earlier. Felix was beginning to think it might be true. “Is it your turn to have your power backfire on you?”

“I don’t think so,” Felix said, burying his face in his hands. Lying down on the pavement and going to sleep felt like such a tempting option right now. “I feel like crap, but it has nothing to do with fire. Also… I think Phoebe did something to me. Or, I don’t know, but something wasn’t right.”

“Yeah, what was wrong with her?” Sam said. “I mean, she always acts like she can’t stand us but it’s the first time she’s actually slammed the door to our faces. And she looked even sicker than you, dude, and that’s saying something.”

“It wasn’t just that,” Felix said, deciding to ignore Sam’s last comment. “I felt something when I touched her. And her eyes darkened for a moment. I mean that literally. It was like—”

“Magic?” Jake said, lifting an eyebrow. “I thought Phoebe couldn’t do magic.”

“She can’t, no,” Felix murmured. He straightened and looked in the shop’s direction, but the cars that were parked there blocked his view. “At least she shouldn’t be able to. But—”

“Wait a minute, didn’t the restoring demon have black eyes?” Sam asked, widening his eyes.

“Not like that. The whites of her eyes weren’t black too, like it was when the restoring demon possessed someone.”

A thought was forming in his mind, the beginning of a theory about what was going on, but a wave of dizziness submerged him and the thought scattered like a wave crashing against reefs. He listed to the side and Jake caught him with a muffled curse. 

“Shit, Felix!” The cool press of Jake’s hand against the side of his face made Felix realize he’d closed his eyes. “You’re burning up.”

“Maybe I have a fever,” Felix mumbled. He certainly felt bad enough for it. 

“Or maybe it’s your power. Let’s get you home.”

Jake was already pulling him up but Felix dug his heels. “No. If my power goes haywire, then stuff is going to burn. Don’t take me home; take me to the hideout. We—we need to get Andy. This won’t work without him. Someone needs to—the spell—”

He had to force himself to open his eyes so he could see where he was going, and he didn’t have much focus and energy left for anything but putting one foot in front of the other. He still didn’t feel like he was under magical attack but rather like he was suffering from a bad case of the flue, but it was hard to ignore how much worse the simple fact of touching Phoebe had made him.

“Dude,” Sam said, shifting the hold he had on Felix’s arm. “You’re getting really warm. It’s kind of uncomfortable.”

Warmer, warmer. What was going on with Phoebe? Had she done something to him, to them? But Phoebe had always been helpful, in her own grudging way—at least she had been in the other universe and had no reason to be different here. Roland was different here too, though. It was possible that not all the changes between the universes were related to them. Or maybe he didn’t know Phoebe that well, in this universe or in the other. 

“Ow, damn it!”

Jake’s yell made Felix jump. He turned his head and saw Jake shake his hand, blowing at a reddened spot of skin. “You’re burning, mate,” Jake said to Felix’s puzzled look. “Literally.”

He and Sam propped Felix against a mail box and he clang to it desperately. He must have looked drunk to the passer-byes, but he feared that if he let go he was going to fell to the ground and break into a million pieces. Despite what his friends were saying about him burning up he only felt colder by the instant, like all the heat was fleeing away from him in incontrollable waves. 

Jake tried to touch him again but drew back his hand with a hiss. “You’ll have to walk,” he said. “Can you walk?”

“Yeah,” Felix said.

This was a rather optimistic assessment of his current state. When he let go of the mail box he swayed on his feet for a few seconds, Jake and Sam hovering by his sides. The grainy cement surface of the pavement undulated in front of his eyes, making his stomach flip-flop with motion sickness.

“I’ve got it,” he said, more to himself than to his friends. 

The walk to the hideout took them a long time because Felix had to pause from time to time to gather his strength. The sounds from the street—cars driving by, honking horns, chatting passer-byes—echoed like bells to his ears, loud to the point of pain. Half-way there a woman stopped them and asked if he was all right. Felix couldn’t focus on her face, because his vision was blurry and distorted, but her voice was warm and soothing, creaking with age, and it summoned the image of a kind grand-mother. Jake told her something that Felix couldn’t make out and she let them go their way. By the time they’d reached the hideout Felix could smell burnt fabric and knew that his own body had started attacking his clothes. 

He wanted to sit down, but couldn’t do it on the dry forest ground or inside the wooden shack—if he got worse, he didn’t want to risk setting a forest fire—so he stood in the middle of the clearing, wavering like a leaf in the wind. He was so cold he felt like he had ice water flowing through his veins instead of blood.

“Andy—" he said.

“I called Mia,” Sam said. “She’s picking him up.”

“Mia?” His brain was frozen too, and the thoughts moved at an achingly slow pace.

“Yeah, she’ll say she need him to work on a project. Don’t worry, Mia can convince a rock to do tricks. And Andy’s parents want him to hang out with other people than us, don’t they? They should be happy to see her.”

Some time passed, but it was hard for Felix to tell how much. He just stood there, shivering from the chill and focusing all his energy on keeping on his feet. The burning smell grew stronger and Felix tried not to think of the damage on what had been one of his favourite t-shirts. Sam and Jake stayed close to him, but they couldn’t touch him without getting burned. 

“Here they are,” Jake said, sounding relieved.

Felix had sensed Andy’s approach, but he was surprised to see that Ellen had come too. She trotted up to him and stopped, her eyes wide and green as she looked him up and down. She reached out, and—

“No, don’t touch him!”

Ellen’s hand had been quicker than Jake’s cry, and when she touched Felix’s face she let out a yelp of surprised pain and recoiled. 

“How you can you still be alive when your body temperature is _this_ high?” she said. 

“Magic, Ellen. Remember, I told you that my power is fire.”

“Right. Magic.”

She was saying the word with a heavy dose of scepticism, even though she’d seemed accepting of the truth earlier in the day. Ellen’s barriers were made of reinforced steel. 

“So what do we do?” she asked, clenching her fists like she was readying for battle. 

“The spell I used on Jake and Sam—” He reached out for his satchel but stopped at the sizzling sound it made when he touched it. “Andy, get my journal. It’s—it’s one of the later entries—”

He wanted to give more instructions, but his tongue was numb and he couldn’t control it anymore. His vision greyed at the edges and the ground jumped at him. He found himself with a mouthful of dirt and decomposing leaves, not quite sure how he’d got there. He tried to roll on his back but his limbs were wet noodles, barely in his control. The burning smell had got intense and he heard his friends yell. He felt a tug when Andy looked through his satchel for his journal, and then Andy’s voice intoned the spell while Felix struggled to sit up to minimize his contact with the ground. 

Andy said the last words of the spell and silence fell upon the clearing. Felix could barely hear anything other than his own laboured breathing. He still felt every bit as awful as a moment ago, even though when he’d used the spell on his friends the improvement had been instantaneous. He forced his eyes open: Andy was standing about a meter from him, the journal open in his hands, while the others were scattered in a misshapen half-circle around them. Small flames gleamed and flickered in clusters around him. 

“Did it work?” Andy asked, his brow almost comically furrowed. 

“No,” Felix said, the word scraping painfully on its way out. “I feel the same.”

“Why didn’t it work? Did I say it wrong? Should I try it again?”

“Maybe you should—" Felix started, but before he could finish his sentence his eye was caught by a patch of darkness twirling between him and Andy.

At first, he thought it was just a trick of his skewed vision, but the darkness pulsed, folded and swelled, absorbing the light around it until it looked almost like twilight. When he heard his friends gasp and saw Andy take a step back, Felix knew he wasn’t the only one seeing it. 

“ _Mine_ ,” a voice said. It echoed weirdly, like two people talking slightly out of sync. “ _Your struggles are useless. They will only make me more powerful in the end._ ”

The voice—voices?—sounded familiar in a way Felix couldn’t put his finger on, but this wasn’t the moment to try and figure it out because he could feel himself weakening even further, like the patch of darkness was siphoning what little strength he had left.

“Who are you?” Andy asked, his voice pitched higher from panic. “ _What_ are you? What do you want?”

“ _I almost have what I want. I will have it no matter what you do._ ”

“Don’t talk to it!” Felix said, his voice almost a growl from the effort it took him to speak coherently. “Get together, and—and—”

By some miracle that could have been their magical bond, or maybe just the fact that they’d spent so much time together, Andy divined his meaning. He dropped the journal to the ground and held out both of his hands for Jake and Sam. The three of them got closer to Felix; when he saw that Sam and Jake meant to touch him Felix tried to inch away— _no, don’t, you’ll hurt yourself_ —but they both concertedly took hold of his wrists, ignoring the heat. Andy recited the spell again, having apparently memorized it already, and then one more time, Jake and Sam joining him until they were all shouting it together. The talisman on Felix’s chest felt like a piece of burning coal. 

“Earth, water, air, fire—”

“—your greatest strength, your kindest grace—”

“—don’t let any evil remain!”

The darkness spasmed while the echoing voice shrieked and roared at the same time with both pain and anger. The air around it rippled like under extreme heat and the darkness shrunk to a pinprick, then disappeared completely with a soundless explosion whose shockwave threw everyone to the ground. Felix probably blacked out for a moment, because next thing he knew he was lying on his back, blinking at the blindingly blue sky. An exhaustion so intense that moving felt like a remote dream had taken hold of his limbs, but the awful cold he’d been feeling had disappeared. He heard his name being called by a chorus of voices; Ellen’s face hovered over him, then Jake and Sam and Andy, and finally Mia, until he couldn’t see the sky anymore but just a patchwork of floating faces.

“Are you all right?”

“Is that thing—”

“It’s gone,” Andy said. “I mean, it’s gone for now, maybe for good—hard to tell for the moment. Did the spell work? I feel like it worked. That—that was intense.”

“I—think it worked.”

Hands grabbed his arms while other hands pressed against his back, helping him sit, then stand up. The change of station made him dizzy for a second, but nowhere near as badly as before. With an arm looped around Jake’s neck and the other around Sam’s, Felix looked at the clearing for a sign of what had just happened, but everything seemed normal. Sunlight filtered through the trees, birds chirped happily, and the wind whistled through the leaves. The only sign of the last few moments were the dead leaves darkened from Felix’s fire. 

“What the hell was that?” Ellen asked, voicing the question that was probably on everyone’s mind.

“I don’t know,” Felix said. He had some ideas, but before trying to work them into something that made sense he needed to lie down somewhere that wasn’t forest ground. “Did you guys get burned?”

Jake flattened the hand that wasn’t holding Felix against his jeans. “It’s fine,” he said. “Burned myself worse on the stove at home.”

“Dude,” Sam said, “by the end you were _literally_ on fire.”

His friends brought Felix home and they all crammed inside his room, Felix lying on his couch while the others sat wherever they could find room to sit. They discussed in circles for a while about what that darkness had been.

“Okay, I get that this wasn’t a restoring demon,” Sam said, “because the restoring demon in the other universe never did— _that_ , but couldn’t it be some other sort of demon? I seem to remember Phoebe saying that there was more than one sort of demon.”

“What’s a restoring demon?” Mia asked. She and Sam were sitting on the floor, and things seemed to be back to normal for them because Sam had an arm around Mia’s shoulders. 

“It’s what was after us in the other universe,” Andy said, and Felix tuned out the rest of the explanation, turning his thoughts to the strange familiarity of the voice that had talked to them in the clearing.

It had sounded like two distinct voices talking almost at the same time. One was of unidentifiable gender, barely human-sounding at all, but the other had been clearly female. A female voice that Felix was sure he knew, but it was like trying to identify someone over the phone when you’d never called them before. He almost had it, though, felt like the name was on the tip of his tongue—

“Phoebe!” he exclaimed, punching his fist in his open palm. 

“What about Phoebe?” Andy asked.

“The voice—part of the voice. Didn’t it remind you of Phoebe’s voice?”

Felix’s friends frowned as they turned over the question in their minds, but before any of them could answer the door flew open and Oscar wheeled into the room.

“Hey, Oskie,” Felix said, trying to sit straighter. “What’s up?”

His brother looked around the room, eyes widening at finding it so full, and then gave Felix a narrow-eyed glare. “What happened? Something happened, and don’t try to tell me it didn’t.”

“Oh, uh.” 

Felix frantically tried to think of how to put the story in a way that wouldn’t worry Oscar too much, but then he considered what Oscar had said. How had he known that something had happened? His weird burst of prescience while they were gone had looked like a fluke. 

“How did you know something was wrong?”

“I—” Oscar’s eyes lingered on Ellen and Mia for a moment before he seemed to decide it was safe to talk in front of them. “—got a vision. It was really quick, gone in a flash, but you were on the ground and there was _fire_ , and this—this dark floating thing.”

Felix and his friends looked at each other, the silence heavy with unaired conversation. Ellen rolled her eyes and said, “Okay, so _Oscar_ ’s got powers, now? I give up; nothing makes sense in this town anymore.”

Oscar ignored her comment, looking intently at Felix instead. “It really happened, didn’t it? Are you all right? You look like you haven’t slept for a week.”

Felix let a weary chuckle escape him. “Certainly feel like it. Listen, I’ll tell you everything later, but can you run interference with Mum for a little while? I don’t want her to see me like this, but if I have time for a nap I’ll be—”

Three precise knocks on the door interrupted him and Felix threw his head back, groaning inwardly. He’d recognized his mum’s way of knocking and knew that no power on earth would keep her out. 

“Yeah,” he said, resigned to his fate.

She opened the door and peered inside. When she saw the crowd, she said, “Oh, I hadn’t realized your friends were there. Do you need—” She startled when she finally had a good look at Felix. “Honey, you look terrible! Are you sick?”

She rushed into the room and had to zigzag between his friends, then walk around Oscar before she got to Felix.

“Are you coughing?” she asked, feeling Felix’s forehead with her hand. He would have dodged, but he was too tired for that. “Hmm, you don’t feel warm.”

 _If you’d seen me an hour ago._ “Mum, please, this is getting embarrassing.”

“I’ll make you tea with honey in it. You know, just like when you were little?”

“Mum!”

“You know what,” Ellen said a little too loudly. “I think we should go and leave you to it.”

‘ _Traitor’_ , Felix mouthed in her direction and she stuck out her tongue. Sam, Jake, and Andy walked one by one by Felix’s couch, patting his head or shoulder in good-bye as they left. Once all his friends were gone, Mum sighed and sat on the edge of the couch. 

“What’s wrong, Felix?” she asked.

Felix shared a look with his brother over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—” She turned to Oscar, smiling apologetically. “Sweetie, do you mind giving me a moment with your brother?”

“Sure.”

Oscar wheeled himself out and Mum stared down gravely at Felix until he wanted to squirm. 

“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” she said. “I haven’t known in a while, long before those awful two weeks, and I’m aware it’s my own fault.”

“Mum, I’m just feeling a little under the weather. There’s no need for—”

“It’s more than that, I know it is. You’ve been—preoccupied since you’ve come back. Burning yourself out on God knows what project.”

Felix looked at her, surprise robbing him of his words. She’d been overbearing since he’d come back, but he’d thought she was just fussing and hadn’t noticed anything. He’d got used to flying under the radar. 

“Mum,” he said, trying to find what to say. “I swear to you that I’m fine.”

She gave him a sad smile. “No, you’re not. You haven’t been in a long time, and I’m sorry about that, but I know something else has been going on since you’ve gone missing. I won’t force you to talk about it, but you know that you don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, right? You don’t have to do everything alone.”

 _But it’s my fault, so _I_ have to fix it._ He’d dragged his friends into this mess of magic and demon fighting. The fact that they hadn’t been his friends at the start didn’t make it any better. 

“I know, mum. You don’t have to worry.”

She stroked his hair and he didn’t try to move away. “It’s silly to ask a mother not to worry,” she said. “Can I just ask you one thing?”

“Hmm, okay?”

“When you got lost in the woods—were you trying to run away?”

He had to swallow through the lump in his throat before he could talk. “I wasn’t, Mum. I swear. We were never trying to get away.”

Her eyes searched his face for a long time. “All right,” she said. “So, do you want that tea with honey?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling at her. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

\---

“I had a thought yesterday,” Andy said.

They were at the school library, which was a place that Andy had a personal appreciation for but wasn’t the best if they wanted total privacy. But since Andy’s parents were making it difficult for him to see his friends outside of school, they didn’t have a lot of options. Jake and Sam both looked slightly bewildered at this new-for-them environment, while Felix just looked tired. He wasn’t bouncing back very quickly from yesterday’s incident, but having done the spell casting this time Andy could now see that this must have sapped a lot of his strength even before his power turned against him. 

“What’s your theory?” Jake asked. 

“The way our powers have gone haywire on us kind of remind me how the immune system flares up against intrusions—like bacteria or viruses. It’s like our powers were actively fighting something.”

“In that case it felt more like they were fighting _us_ ,” Sam said.

“Well, according to my theory, the—negative effects that we faced were just side effects. Like getting a fever: it’s not enjoyable, and it can be dangerous if it gets too high, but it’s actually supposed to help.”

“Hmm.” Felix tapped the tip of his pen against the blank page of an open notebook. “Where does Phoebe fit in your theory?”

“Are you sure it was her voice?” Andy asked. 

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Felix said.

“I don’t get it,” Jake said. “She helped us with Andy. And all this time she was—working with a demon? _Was_ a demon? That doesn’t make sense.”

“If Andy’s right then him turning into a water spirit wasn’t Phoebe’s primary purpose,” Felix said, “but just a side effect. So maybe she helped because this wasn’t what she wanted.”

“What does she want, then?”

“The spell,” said Andy, hit by a sudden thought. “The binding spell that she had us cast. What did it say exactly? Do any of you remember?”

“I have it written down somewhere,” Felix said, flipping through the pages of his journal. “ ‘Elements that knit the world,” he read. “I invoke thee and bind you to my word. Earth, water, air and fire, bound and shared together by us all, access my power, surrender control.’ That last part,” he said, shaking his pen at the written words of the spell. “Surrender control to who?”

“But where does the demon—or darkness, or whatever—fit? Is Phoebe working with it, being controlled by it? Was it already going on when she had us cast that spell?”

“Hey!” Sam said too loudly, almost jumping from his seat. It triggered a chorus of ‘ _ssshh_ ’ from the other students doing innocent school work around them. “Hey,” Sam repeated more softly. “Remember when we went to see her about Andy? And I saw a book that was about summoning?”

“So she summoned something,” Felix said. “Presumably that darkness we saw. But how—Oh. Oh, _of course._ ”

“What?” Andy asked. “What is it?”

“Phoebe shouldn’t be able to summon anything. She _can’t_ , because she has no magical potential.”

“She said that there were some spells everyone could do, though,” Andy said.

“Summoning isn’t one of them. This is heavy stuff. She should never have been able to do it. Unless—”

“—unless she’s been stealing from us through that spell,” Andy finished for him. “I see. That makes sense.”

“But we can still use our powers,” Jake said. “Even when they’ve got out of control, they were never completely gone.”

“Maybe ‘stealing’ isn’t the right word, then,” Andy said. “Maybe ‘siphoning’ is more accurate. Maybe she never intended to take all of it, and she didn’t know about the side effects.”

“Still a really shitty thing to do,” Sam said with a scowl. “We _trusted_ her!”

“Yeah,” Felix said, eyes lost for a moment to private contemplation. “Obviously we shouldn’t have. We need to find out how to deal with this darkness. The way Phoebe’s eyes darkened when I spoke to her, and the way her voice echoed with its voice make it look like it’s controlling or even possessing her. And that thing spelled out its intentions pretty clearly. Even if Phoebe didn’t want to steal our powers, _it_ clearly wants it all. And given how we’ve reacted so far, I don’t know how badly it’s going to affect us if it succeeds.”

“You know,” Sam said, “those powers are pretty cool and everything, but if they result in us _dying_ then I’m ready to give them back.”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Andy said. “They’re part of us now.”

They discussed their options for a little longer. The priority was to identify this ‘darkness’ that had talked to them, and for that they needed to do extensive research, which was fortunately Andy’s area of predilection. Their most reliable source of information were the books at Phoebe’s, but since that was out of the question for obvious reasons they had to turn to the Internet. Andy did most of it with Felix, first at the library during the day, then at their respective homes in the evening, texting each other about their progresses. There was a staggering amount of information about demons on the Internet, but it was hard to untangle superstition from fiction from true lore. Andy spent his evening glued to his computer screen, even neglecting his homework, which was the first time this had ever happened to him. He figured he could do it when he was sure to live through next week, though. 

The faint _ting_ that came from his phone startled him awake, making him realize only then that he’d fallen asleep on his computer chair, his arms hanging to his sides and his chin tucked against his chest. He sat up and groaned, massaging the crick in his neck, then reached out for his phone and glanced at the new text message. It was from Felix and it pointed to a relevant website he’d found. Andy typed a quick message of thanks and looked up the address Felix had provided him. 

“Incorporeal darkness…” he read out loud as he scrolled down the walls of text. “Being from another dimension… seeks anchor to our world…”

Another text made his phone lit up. ‘ _Do you think it’s our ‘darkness’?_ ’ Felix was asking. 

‘ _Possibly,_ ’ Andy texted back. ‘ _It sounds similar to what we encountered._ ’

Andy read more about those interdimensional demons until deep in the night. He fell asleep at his desk and woke up the next morning bleary-eyed, his head feeling fuzzy and his body aching. This, of course, didn’t escape his mother’s sharp eyes. 

“Are you coming down with something?” she asked, pressing her fingers against his forehead. 

“I just didn’t sleep well,” he said, tolerating the contact because he knew that fighting it would only make things worse. 

“Why is that?” she asked. Her face softened from her severe inquisitive expression. “Did you have a nightmare?”

Andy pondered whether to say yes or no. If he said no, then his mother would maybe keep pushing until she had a satisfying explanation for his sleeplessness, but if he said yes, then she would badger him again about seeing a therapist. 

“No,” he finally said. “I just had homework to finish, and then my mind was too caught in it for sleep.” Which, really, was almost the truth. 

The mention of homework immediately relaxed his mum, and she went back to drinking her coffee. Andy focused on not falling asleep on the table. It was harder than it should have been. 

At school, they held a war council in one of the empty classrooms. This council included Ellen and Mia—which was fine, in theory, if not for the fact that Andy still felt slightly uncomfortable in Ellen’s presence. She mostly ignored him, and that was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because Ellen’s contempt was a sharp weapon and Andy would rather not deal with it, and also because it meant he didn’t have to figure out what to tell her. A curse, because it let him observe her from the corner of his eye and wish she wouldn’t cover her freckles with make-up, wish she would smile at him the way she had in the other universe. _She was a different person there. Get over it, Andy._

“We think we’ve identified what the darkness we saw is,” he explained to the group, looking at Felix to include him in that ‘we.’ “It is, according to our theory, a sort of interdimensional being. It doesn’t have a body, and couldn’t survive in our dimension on its own. What it can do, unfortunately, is communicate with people from our realm. Its kind has often been thought of as ‘demons’ and many summoning spells exist to contact them. At first it would have only been able to communicate with its summoner—in that case, Phoebe—but its ultimate goal is possession. The bad news is that if it could communicate with someone not Phoebe, then it means that it’s already possessing her.”

Andy paused, giving the others time to let his words sink in. Both Sam and Jake looked about as tired as Andy and Felix, even though they hadn’t spent their night on research—maybe they were just worried about the situation, which was certainly warranted. 

“Is there a way to, I don’t know, exorcise her, and ban the thing back to its dimension?” Sam said. He was sharing a desk with Mia, him sitting on the chair and her sitting on the table with her feet on his lap.

“We found a few spells, but it’s going to be a lot harder to ban the thing now that it’s possessing Phoebe. On the other hand, if Phoebe dies, it apparently dies with her.”

“Wait a minute,” Jake said. “I mean, I hate Phoebe for what she did to us, but isn’t killing her a bit extreme? I don’t want to use my power to go around killing people!”

“No,” Felix said, “but if the demon feels threatened it might jump out of her to avoid dying.”

The bell rang at that moment and Ellen said, “Not that all those talks of murder aren’t terribly entertaining, but I have to go to class and you probably do too.”

“You’re right,” Andy said, maybe a little too eagerly because she gave him a look. “We’ll talk about this later. We need to come up with a plan.”

Class was surprisingly uninteresting this afternoon, or at least it couldn’t hold Andy’s attention as well as it usually did. Even Science class, normally his favourite subject, didn’t grab him enough to keep him from almost falling asleep in class. One moment Andy was blinking at Mr. Bates, trying to follow what he was saying about molecules, and the next he was still blinking at Mr. Bates, except that the teacher was now talking about what would be included in next week’s test. Andy glanced at his neighbour’s notes to find out what he’d missed, but the incident left him rattled. Combined with the lingering sleepiness that made his surrounding feel hazy, Andy was seized by a jittery sort of paranoia that everyone had seen him and was secretly sniggering at him. He looked around, but his classmates were either listening to Mr. Bates, doodling in their notebooks or surreptitiously playing on their phones under their desks. Mr. Bates himself was still talking, not looking in Andy’s direction at all. He must have missed Andy zoning out, but it was still mortifying in the extreme. 

Andy rushed out of the classroom at the end of the lesson, his head hung low in shame. He headed for the bathroom, hoping that to splash some water on his face might help clear his mind. He turned the faucet and let the water run for a moment, merely looking at it, listening to the rushing sound it made as it flowed out of the faucet and down the drain in the sink. There was nothing clearer, purer, stronger than water. Andy reached out to touch it, but at the same moment the door slammed open and he jumped. Water leapt at him, splashing his face and the front of his shirt. He spluttered, blinking water out of his eyes, ignoring the sniggers from whoever had just entered the bathroom. When he moved his hand to turn the water off, water moved with him and it sprayed out of the sink, wetting his shoes before he could step back. Once the water was turned off Andy looked down at himself, disgruntled. He was soaked all over, his shirts, his pants, his shoes; his wet hair dripped in his eyes. 

In the hallway, he drew himself a few amused looks, but he was used to it by now. The water exploding to his face bothered him more. Since the spell Phoebe had given them, he’d got a lot better at controlling it, so why—But the spell had never been meant to help them, had it? If Andy’s theory was right, then it had been siphoning their powers for Phoebe’s personal use. Despite whatever magical patching work they’d done, they obviously hadn’t been able to stop the process. When Andy met the other for lunch, he noticed signs that they’d been having the same problem he had: the tips of Felix’s hair was singed, Jake’s clothes were stained with dirt, and Sam didn’t show any sign that he’d been attacked by his own powers but his face was scrunched in an unhappy frown. 

“I’m sick of this—” he said and threw up an arm at the same time, which sent a gust of wind slashing across the courtyard. It was a good thing they were outside, because other than a few exclamations and groans from the kids whose football got caught in it, it didn’t seem to raise much alarm from the other students.

“Sam,” Felix said, but he sounded more weary than annoyed.

“Well, sorry,” Sam said, “but do you mean to tell me that your hair is a new fashion statement? It’s not just happening to me, is it?”

“No,” Andy said, gesturing at his wet clothes. 

“Definitely not,” Jake said.

It was warm enough outside that Andy’s clothes were drying quickly, but he hated the stickiness of wet clothes, and exhaustion and worry were playing havoc with his nerves. He sagged down on a bench and waited for the other boys to join him. 

“We need a plan,” he said. “Because I’m afraid this is just going to get worse.”

“What we need,” Felix said, “is to break that spell that’s messing with our powers. It’s weakening us and strengthening _it_ at the same time. So I gave it some thought, and—”

He cut himself off and looked ahead, his attention obviously captured by something. Andy followed his look and saw that Ellen and Mia were coming their way. He flushed, thinking about how silly he must look with his wet clothing, but then Ellen didn’t give him more than a passing glance. 

“Felix,” she said, “what happened to your hair?”

“I ha—" Before he could finish his second word, Felix’s hand burst into flames. He cursed, grabbed his wrist and hunched over himself trying to hide the fire from sight. “ _That_ happened,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Holy—” Ellen moved so she stood right in front of Felix. “Put it out!” she said in a hiss.

“I’m trying! You think I burned my hair on purpose?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, creating a deep furrow between his eyebrows. Andy could feel the heat from the flames from where he sat, and he marvelled that Felix had apparently managed not to burn himself so far. The fascinating—and disturbing—part was that it wasn’t a controlled flame floating over Felix’s palm like it had before; instead, it looked like Felix’s hand was burning, swathed in flames. Only the fact that Felix didn’t appear to be in pain contradicted that idea. Eventually the fire died down and Felix let out a long breath in relief.

“Do you think anyone saw that?” Mia asked, nervously looking around. 

“I think we’d have heard more screams if anyone had,” Jake said, but he was casting glances at the kids running around playing football or chatting in groups. 

“What’s going on?” Ellen asked. “Is it more of that weird fit you had the other day?”

Felix raised an eyebrow at the words ‘weird fit’ but he merely said, “No, it’s different. Our powers are getting out of control, but they’re not turning against us like they did before. But the cause is probably the same.” He turned toward the rest of them on the bench, crouching in a conspiratorial way. “As I was saying, I thought about breaking the spell. Since we’re the ones who cast it, we should be able to do a simple reversal spell in theory. But then I thought about Phoebe taking some of our hair for the spell, and I’m afraid that as long as we don’t destroy it, the spell is going to hold. So we’ve got to find the hair she took from us to break the spell.”

“You’ve got to find hair,” Ellen repeated, saying it in that special Ellen way that made it sound like a stupid idea. “She could have hidden it anywhere! What if she keeps it on herself?”

“I’ve given that part some thought too. We need Oscar’s help.”

Oscar developing powers of prescience was a sore point to Andy, because it didn’t fit his ongoing theory for why they’d been saddled with their elemental powers, which was that a combination of their use of the talisman and their going back and forth between universes had woken up their latent magical abilities. But Oscar hadn’t come with them to the other universe, so that made the theory moot. Maybe they’d created a disturbance by travelling from one universe to the other, and it was that disturbance that had stirred up magical talents. 

Andy couldn’t come with the others for Oscar’s show of power, because he was still grounded. Well, ‘grounded’ wasn’t the world that his parents used, as from their point of view it wasn’t supposed to be a punishment. They just wanted to keep him where they were sure he was safe, was what they said, and in all fairness, it wasn’t surprising that they would be freaked out. But it was hard to want to be fair when his parents’ protectiveness seemed to mostly translate into keeping him away from the first friends he’d had in forever. 

He tried to keep busy while he waited for the text that would tell him their next course of action. He did homework, because he couldn’t get the load grow too big, then he did more research on their enemy. Whatever happened, he wanted to be prepared. He was deeply engrossed in a comparative of the merits of various banishment spells, taking notes as he read, when he heard a soft rattle against his door.

“Who is it?” he asked. He didn’t feel like talking to his mum or his grand-mother.

“It’s Dad. Can I come in?”

Andy pondered his answer for a moment. He felt a smidge of resentment that his dad hadn’t tried to defend him from forced imprisonment. Any time it looked like Dad might get a word in favour of Andy being able to see his friends, Mum or Nai-Nai would mention the day he’d argued for Andy going to the excursion and he was cowed into meek agreement. 

“You can come in,” Andy said once he knew he’d made his dad wait long enough for him to get nervous; it was petty, but Andy would take what measure of satisfaction he could.

The door opened and Dad slowly poked his head through the gap, as though he was afraid the entrance was booby-trapped. _That’s an idea_ , Andy thought. At least that way he would manage to preserve his privacy. 

“Get inside, Dad,” Andy said, containing a sigh. “What do you want?”

“Can’t I just come and check on my son, see how he’s—”

“Dad, please. Not you.”

Dad got the rest of his body inside the room and closed the door. He leaned against Andy’s desk, resting a hand on top of a pile of textbooks. Andy quickly closed the window he’d been checking before his dad was near enough to see the computer screen, hopefully not looking too suspicious as he did it. 

“Andy,” Dad said in the tone he used for serious conversations that weren’t about science. “I know you’re not very happy with us right now—”

The euphemism set off Andy’s hair-trigger mood. “Of course I’m not happy! Dad, you know it’s unfair. Why am I being punished when I haven’t done anything—”

“Son, you’re not being punished—”

“How do you call keeping me from seeing my friends?”

“We’re not—”

However his dad meant to finish this sentence was lost on Andy, whose attention was dragged from the argument by a floating piece of darkness that he saw at the corner of his eye. At first he thought that either his eyes or the light were tricking him; he was tired, exhausted even, and he’d been staring at a computer screen for way too long. As he stared at the dark spot, though, he could see it grow by increments, becoming wider and deeper and darker.

“Andy? What’s wrong?”

“Dad,” Andy said in a strained voice. “Can you see this? This dark spot floating over my bed; do you see it?”

“I—” Dad squinted and leaned forward, then took a step in direction of the bed. Andy caught his wrist to stop him from getting closer. “What’s this?” Dad asked. “Is it solid? It doesn’t look like it—”

“Don’t touch it!” Andy exclaimed before his dad’s natural curiosity made him reach out for what was most likely another manifestation of the demon. “Stay back.”

Andy tried to shove his dad behind him, but he wasn’t strong enough to make him move. The patch of darkness started to quiver and then a voice spoke, that odd echoing voice that they’d heard the other day, “ _Andy Lau. Andy, all alone, all alone. Water, water everywhere, but no help in sight._ ”

A corner of Andy’s mind noted that part of the voice, the echoing part, did indeed sound like Phoebe. The rest of him was consumed by terror; because feelings of injustice put aside, the demonic voice was right: they were stronger together, but right now Andy was separated from the herd and everybody knew what happened to the straggling antelope. 

He tried to swallow, but his throat was parched. “What do you want?” he managed to squeak out.

“Andy, what’s going on?” Dad asked. “Is that voice—is a recording playing out from somewhere? Is there someone here? Show yourself!”

The demon made a dry, creaking sound that Andy eventually identified as laughter. “ _You know what I want_ ,” it answered Andy, ignoring his dad’s increasingly panicked questions. “ _Give it up. It won’t protect you, and it will save me the trouble of having to tear it away from your dead body._ ”

“What?” Dad exclaimed. “If this is a joke, then it has gone too far. I’m going to—”

“Dad, shut up!” Andy snapped, startling even himself. His heart threatened to climb in his throat, making him feel nauseated, and he hoped that the others could feel it, hoped that they knew he needed help— “Why do you need me to give it up?” he asked the demon.

Why, indeed? Obviously it had cornered Andy because he was alone, but why the amicable chat? Why not just take what it wanted instead of asking? _Because it can’t_ , Andy thought with perfect, terror-edged clarity. To be able to speak to him it must be projecting itself using whatever magical ability Phoebe’s spell had managed to take from them. But it wasn’t enough; the demon wanted more, and the spell wasn’t providing fast enough.

“You can’t touch me,” he said brazenly. “You can only frighten me.”

“ _I will be able to touch you soon enough. You’re only getting weaker by the day. What use is a power that you can’t even control?_ ”

“You’re all talk,” Andy said, trying to sound contemptuous and not scared half out of his mind. His phone rang and he hoped it was one of his friends getting worried. “In this word you’re impotent.”

As he said this the darkness jumped forward and Andy scrambled back with a yelp, pulling his dad with him. The dark patch, which had originally been the size of a fist, expanded until Andy could barely see the daylight that flowed from his window. Dad said something, his voice high with fear and uncertainty, his hands clutching Andy’s shoulders, but Andy’s ears were buzzing and he couldn’t understand what his father was saying.

“Divinity of the elements, I summon thee,” he said, his voice trembling. The others weren’t there with him, but maybe the stupid bond that had formed between them meant that he held part of their essences within him _somehow_. “Earth, water, fire, air.”

“ _This is useless. You can’t—_ ”

“Earth, water, fire and air!” Andy shouted, loud enough to drown the demon’s words. “Earth, water, fire, and air! _Earth, water, fire and air!_ ”

Almost unwillingly he closed his eyes and kept shouting, again and again, feeling a gentle warmth bloom at the pit of his stomach and suffusing his whole body. He shouted until his throat was raw and he felt someone shake his shoulder.

“Andy. Andy! I think—I think it’s gone.”

Andy opened his eyes and blinked against the brightness of the sun. He couldn’t see any patch of darkness anywhere in the room. The demon had gone, somehow chased by Andy’s magic. 

“It worked,” Andy said incredulously. A bubble of hysterical laughter was making its way up his throat. “I chased him, it worked!”

His phone rang again and he picked up. “ _Andy!_ ” Jake shouted in his ear. “Are you all right? We felt—”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Andy took a big gulp of air. His heartbeat was slowing down to a less painful pace. “I’m fine, but I got a little visit from the demon.”

“ _What?_ What did it—”

Jake’s exclamations were lost to Andy when his dad grabbed his shoulder and forcibly spun him around. “What do you mean, a demon? What’s that nonsense?”

“Dad.” Andy murmured into the phone ‘ _give me a minute_ ’ and then covered it with his hand. “The darkness you just saw was a demon. It’s threatening me and my friends. You have to let me—”

“No,” Dad said, shaking his head at the same time. “This is absurd. What we just saw was—Well, it was a little odd, but there must be an explanation for it. Maybe someone is trying to mess with us.”

“Dad, no. I know it’s hard to believe—I know it, because I had a hard time making myself believe it too. I’ve exhausted all other possible theories before I came to the conclusion that magic—magic is _real_. It’s real, and it’s part of my life now.”

Dad blinked at him. “I don’t understand,” he said. 

Andy’s stomach lurched at the helpless expression on his father’s face. He didn’t think he’d ever heard his father say something like ‘I don’t understand’ and betray the fact that he’d finally come across a concept that he couldn’t grasp at all.

“I’ll explain everything,” Andy said. “But you have to let me go now. You have to let me go see my friends, because together is the only way we’re going to face that threat.”

“If there’s a threat, though, isn’t it dangerous to leave the house? Wouldn’t it be better—”

“Dad, you saw it right now, didn’t you? You saw that thing in my room. I’m not safe here. I’ll only be safe if I can get to my friends. Dad, please. It’s the only way.”

Andy could tell that his dad wanted to argue, but couldn’t find any argument that would work in a situation so vastly out of the realm of his experience. He still had a hand on Andy’s shoulder and he used it to pull Andy to him and wrap him in a hug. 

“Be safe,” he said in Andy’s ear. “Call me if—Come back when—”

None of the usual parental platitudes seemed to satisfy him, so he just hugged Andy harder before releasing him. Andy nodded to him, hoping he looked confident and mature rather than scared and out of his depth. He said into the phone, “I’m coming. Are you still at Felix’s place? I’m coming to you.”

He tried to run all the way to Felix’s place, but it was a couple of kilometres away from his own and he didn’t have the stamina. So when he couldn’t run anymore he just walked as fast as he could and arrived at Felix’s house out of breath. Mrs. Ferne was kneeling by a stretch of loose dark earth, wearing a broad-brimmed hat. She looked up when Andy approached, the motion making the brim of her hat flap.

“Oh, hello, Andy,” she said. “Everyone is in Felix’s room. God knows what they’re doing; I’ve been barred from entering.”

Andy thanked her with a few halted words, struggling to appear normal after what had just happened to him. He hadn’t even reached Felix’s room that the door flew open. Jake made a tense beckoning gesture at Andy. “Get in,” he said. 

Andy had known through the intimate knowledge of the bond that the room would contain Sam and Felix, but there was also Oscar, Ellen and Mia. Andy gave them a little wave, feeling a bit crowded.

“Tell us what happened,” Felix demanded. 

Andy flopped down on the edge of Felix’s couch and told the group about the whole incident. As he explained what had happened he could feel the effects of the adrenaline crash on his body, making his hands shake hard enough that he had to clench them into fists. He could hardly believe he’d come out of it unscathed. 

“It’s interesting that you managed to chase it without us and the talisman,” Felix said thoughtfully. “It’s like—”

“It’s like through the bond we can sort of reach out to each other,” Andy finished for him. “Share our essence or our magic, in a way. So, what did you find out?”

He’d asked Felix, but Oscar was the one to answer, “Phoebe apparently keeps your hair in a drawer in her backroom, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find. The problem is that, uh, she apparently doesn’t leave her shop anymore.”

Andy frowned. “How do you know that?”

“Some kids at school were talking about it,” Mia said, because of course she was the only one of the group who had an actual social life these days. “A few of the guys from the football team wanted to go to the shop and ask about the pink in their hair—apparently they think it’s from a magic spell, or something—” Sam made a choking sound and Mia cut herself off. “What? What is it? Don’t tell me that—”

“The team have been arseholes since we’ve come back,” Felix said nonchalantly. “I mean, they’ve _always_ been arseholes, but they’d kind of outdone themselves. We thought they deserved some sort of retribution.”

Ellen’s head snapped back as she laughed. “Oh my god, this is great! This magic thing has its uses.”

“Anyway,” Mia said, her eyes sliding from Felix to Ellen to Sam. “As I was saying, they tried to go to the shop, multiple times and it was always closed. When they knocked, she opened the door and yelled at them to go away.”

“Kind of what she did with us,” Felix said. “Maybe she’s—aware, somehow, in there. And she’s trying to keep people away.”

Andy swallowed. That sounded awful, even though Phoebe had brought it on herself. If she was still in there, though, it meant that she would probably survive the demon leaving her body. It also meant that maybe she could make it harder for the demon to fight them. 

“So we need to find a way to draw her out,” Jake said. He stood up from his spot on the floor, walked up to the couch and perched on the arm, then casually rested a hand on Andy’s shoulder. Andy looked up and addressed him a tiny smile of gratitude. “How do we do that?”

Felix pulled his long legs up to himself and hugged his knees. “From what Andy told us, it looks like the demon can’t really fight us in this form. It probably needs Phoebe’s body for that. And if it went through the trouble of nagging Andy, it means that it’s getting impatient.”

“Not impatient enough that Phoebe has left her shop,” Sam pointed out.

“The demon wants magic,” Andy said. “ _Our_ magic. If we try to cast a spell—something powerful—then it might be enough for the demon to override Phoebe and get her out of the door.”

“A protective spell, maybe,” Felix said. “If the demon thinks that we’re trying to shield ourselves from it, then it’s probably going to make it react.”

“But who’s going to destroy our hair?” Sam asked. “If we’re out there, pretending to cast a spell.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I bet it can track us, too.”

“We can do it,” Ellen said, exchanging a look with Mia.

“Yeah,” Oscar said, even though he hadn’t been included in the girls’ shared looks.

“No,” Felix said to his brother with a glare. “You’re not getting involved.”

“Oh, okay,” Oscar said, leaning back in his chair and giving one of his wheels an annoyed jerk. “So it’s fine to get me involved when you need one of my visions—”

“It’s not the same,” Felix said. “This is dangerous—”

“ _You_ ’re going to be in danger! You’ll be trying to get the demon to attack you.”

“But if it comes back—”

“I can be the lookout! I can tell the girls if someone’s around the shop, and I can use my visions to warn them that the demon is coming back!” Oscar’s hands tightly gripped the arms of his wheelchair. “When you were gone,” he said in a voice that squeaked mid-sentence, “there was nothing I could do to help. I had to wait the whole day for someone to give me news. Let me help now.”

There was a long stretched-out silence as the brothers looked at each other intently while everyone else tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. Andy looked down at his hands, fingers spread out on his thighs. Felix eventually sighed and said, “All right. Fine. You and the girls go to Phoebe’s shop and destroy our hair while we try to keep the demon busy. Call us when you’re done. I mean, I guess we’ll probably feel the difference when our powers come back, but still. Hopefully it means that whatever power the demon got from us will leave it when the spell is broken.”

“Yeah, I’m feeling super hopeful right now,” Sam said dryly.

Andy had calmed down from his encounter with the demon, but those words made a little bubble of dread pop at the pit of his stomach. They were heading for a confrontation they didn’t hold all the cards for, and all they could do was hope for the best. Andy wished then that he believed in God, because this seemed to be the sort of circumstances where unfounded blind faith would be a great help. Unfortunately, he wasn’t scared enough to fool himself that much. Instead he shared a long look with Jake, Sam and Felix. Whatever happened, at least they would face it together. 

\---

Ellen’s leg had fallen asleep and she slightly shifted her crouching position to let the blood flow properly again. She and Mia had been hiding behind a car for a good half-hour. Oscar, who couldn’t crouch with them, was stationed a little further, pretending to read a comic book. Felix and the others were at the shack in the woods that had apparently become their hideout, and they should be casting their spell right at this moment, but Ellen couldn’t see any movement from the shop. Her fingers itched to type a text to Felix, asking if they’d done it yet. 

“If the demon has no way to tell what they’re doing, we’re going to look really stupid,” she muttered, more to herself than to Mia.

“I don’t know,” Mia said. “I guess the boys know what they’re doing.”

Ellen snorted. “Oh, you think so? _I_ think they’re totally wringing it.”

She was about to complain some more, but the door to the magic shop opened and she snapped her mouth shut, leaning forward to better see. A woman that Ellen recognized as Phoebe came out; her hair was wild and her eyes… if Ellen didn’t know better, she would say that the woman was high. Phoebe didn’t lock the door behind her—not that it mattered, since Ellen knew where the spare was—and walked away in long strides, obviously in a hurry. There was a sort of—aura around her; nothing visible, just a feeling of persistent wrongness that hit Ellen even at a distance. She walked a few meters past Oscar, who hunched forward around his comic books, trying to hide himself from sight. Ellen was suddenly worried that Phoebe—or the demon, or both—would be able to tell who he was and what he was doing here, but she didn’t stop, didn’t even seem to notice him. Once she was out of sight Ellen exhaled noisily through her nose, realizing that she’d been holding her breath. She turned to Mia, whose face was white as a sheet.

“Okay,” Ellen said. “Let’s do this and get out.”

They slunk from behind the car and casually walked to the shop’s front door. Oscar wheeled closer to the shop so he could guard the entrance. The inside of the shop smelled musty and Ellen could see a layer of dust over the knick-knacks on the shelves. Some crystals and amulets lay on the floor and she had to be careful not to step on them. Ellen wanted to make a snarky comment to Mia, but something about the thick, stale atmosphere of the shop stopped her. It felt like if she spoke up, the demon would be able to hear her from a distance. 

The backroom was completely dark, and the girls had to use their phones to be able to make their way through the cluttered room until they found a lamp they could turn on. The lamp had a dark lampshade and the light it gave was dim and reddish, making all the objects in the room grow long distorted shadows. The room was a mess; there were discarded books everywhere, some opened on the tables, some piled haphazardly on the floor, clothes strewn all over the floor, and the smell of rotting food stunk the air. Obviously the demon didn’t care much for cleaning up.

“Place gives me the creeps,” Ellen dared whisper, and Mia nodded in agreement. 

Oscar had said that the boys’ hair was in the left drawer of a writing desk, but it wasn’t until they found another lamp and turned it on that they managed to spot the piece of furniture. Mia weaved her way through the mess and opened it.

“It’s full of crap,” she said. “Finding hair in it is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“Well, we have to hurry,” Ellen said. “C’mon, I’ll help—”

“ _Who intrudes on my domain?_ ”

The voice made Ellen jump and Mia let out a frightened squeak. It was the voice that they’d heard at the shack, when Felix had almost burnt the forest down, and Ellen frantically looked around the room for the patch of darkness that had accompanied the voice. She found it floating in the middle of the room, barely bigger than a walnut, looking to Ellen like a malevolent eye that was trying to stare down to the bottle of her soul.

“Mia,” she said in a thin, strained whisper. “Keep looking.”

She dashed into the shop, ignoring Mia’s cry of, “Don’t leave me here!” and she grabbed a handful of the crystals and amulets she’d found on the floor. She didn’t know if the demon could hurt them—it hadn’t seemed to be able to hurt Andy or the others, but maybe the boys’ magic protected them—but she wasn’t taking any chances. She rushed back into the backroom. Mia was rummaging through the drawer, throwing objects to the floor as she did, including some odd straw dolls. The darkness had grown bigger, now reaching the size of a watermelon. It was making a strange hissing sound, and tendrils of darkness were reaching out to Mia when Ellen threw one of the amulets she’d found at it, then another, then a crystal, while desperately hoping that some of those objects had genuine power. 

The darkness quivered when one of the crystals flew right through it, and although it was hard to tell whether the object had hurt it, at least the tendrils retracted and left Mia alone.

“Hey, arsehole!” Ellen yelled at the darkness, hoping to focus its attention on her rather on Mia. “Do you like that? Because I have more!” 

She threw another amulet, which unfortunately missed its mark. Her hands were empty now, and the darkness was making that hissing noise again, which sounded closer to something a machine would make rather than any animal sound. The darkness pulsated in Ellen’s direction and she gasped, wanting to go back in the shop to get more amulets but not daring to turn her back on the demon.

“I’ve got it!” Mia shouted.

“ _Thieves!_ ”

The darkness swirled and aimed at Mia again, but Ellen jumped in its way and a dark tendril hit her raised arm. It coiled around her wrist and she screamed as a sensation of cold so sharp it was painful shot up her arm. 

“Hold on, Ellen!” Ellen heard the click of a lighter and the smell of burnt hair rose. 

The darkness hissed and made a series of tortured squeaking sounds that Ellen thought might have been a language. It said, the English words barely intelligible, “ _Don’t think that you’ve won. Your friends are going to_ die.”

Then it disappeared with a pop and Ellen’s knees buckled. She was kept from hitting the floor by Mia, who then took hold of her arm and examined her wrist. The darkness had left a ring of dark bruises, but the pain was manageable and Ellen gently extracted herself from Mia’s grip.

“I’m fine,” she said and got her phone. She speed-dialled Felix and let the phone ring once, as per their pre-established code. Now that the hair was destroyed the boys would need to chant a few lines for the spell to be broken.

When they left the shop, the sun dazzled Ellen and for a moment she couldn’t see, which might explain why she jumped when she heard Oscar’s voice.

“Are you guys okay?” he asked. “Something felt wrong.”

“We saw the demon,” Mia said, her voice shaking a little. She was still loosely holding Ellen’s arm. “I mean, the darkness.”

“Seems it can split its attention between two places at the same time,” Ellen said, still dazed. Her arm hurt fiercely now and her mind kept getting distracted by the pain, making it hard for her to form other thoughts. “But it went away. I hope they can break the spell and that it weakens the demon. I hope—”

 _Your friends are going to die,_ it had said. It was probably trying to frighten her. There was nothing else she could do to help them anyway. The best course of action was to let the boys do their thing and stay out of their way. 

“Do you think they’re okay?” Oscar asked, fiddling with the hem of his t-shirt. “What should we—”

“Wait for me,” Ellen said, and she ran back to the magic shop.

There she grabbed as many amulets and crystals as she could fit in her pockets, then went back to Mia and Oscar.

“Let’s go to the hideout,” she told them. 

If she’d expected one of them to be the voice of reason, then she was disappointed. Both of them nodded fervently, grim expressions on their faces. 

\---

At first, things had been going more or less according to plan. They’d chanted the protective spell that Felix had found, holding hands in a circle while some smelly stuff burnt in a cup at the centre of their circle. Again, Felix and Andy had seen to the details. This spell-casting business often felt pretty silly to Jake. Most spells sounded like uninspired nursery rhymes, and if Jake hadn’t seen them work, he would have found it impossible to believe that a few bad rhymes could really hold any power. He wasn’t the magic expert here, but sometimes he wondered if maybe the spells weren’t just crutches that witches used to aim their power. It could be that only intention mattered. 

After they’d finished casting the spell, they stood in silence for a few minutes, listening out for anything that would disturb the usual forest sounds. Jake was acutely aware of Felix’s and Andy’s sweaty palms in his, of all of his friends’ breathings, in sync with his own. His blood hummed with adrenaline that didn’t have any outlet yet, and even though he was of the opinion that their plan was crazy and had little chance to succeed, at the moment all he wanted was for the demon to show up so this could finally be over with, one way or another. 

A minute later, he was regretting his wish. 

It started with the ground—well, exploding, or at least this was what it felt like at first. Jake was thrown to the ground hard enough that the breath got kicked out of his lungs. Stars burst behind his eyelids. He blinked, trying to scramble back to his feet at the same time. He had let go of Andy but still had Felix’s fingers crushed in his grip, so he hauled him up too.

“It’s here,” Felix said in a breath. The talisman glowed golden on his chest. “Where is it?”

Now that his vision had cleared, Jake could see that pillars of earth springing from under their feet was what had sent them flying. _This is_ my _power_ , Jake thought, surprised by the surge of possessiveness that it sparked in him. _You arsehole_. Sam and Andy had got back up too and circled the cluster of pillars to join them. The forest had gone deadly silent, not even a breath of wind to make the foliage rustle. 

“Oh, there it—” Andy started, pointing a finger at the line of trees.

A blast of wind tore through the trees, aiming at them, and they jumped away from each other to avoid getting hit. Jake looked at where it had come from, and there he saw Phoebe walking toward them, wind swirling around her like a tornado. Even from a distance Jake could see that Phoebe’s eyes were unnaturally dark, two wells of unadulterated blackness. He couldn’t notice anything else, because flames jumped at him and he leapt back, trying to summon the earth to protect himself. He managed to muster a cloud of dust but it didn’t keep his sleeve from catching fire. The precious time he wasted putting the flame out made him miss the next attack—he heard his friends yell and water slammed into his side with bruising force. 

Aching and dripping wet, Jake tried to get his bearings. “Why is it so much more powerful than us with our own powers?” he shouted. 

“That bloody spell,” Felix uttered through gritted teeth. “We have to—fight back.”

At this point, all they really had to do was to keep the demon busy while the girls took care of the hair. It didn’t make me Jake feel much better about how pathetically they fought back. Their powers either exploded out of their control or fizzled at the worst possible moment. Felix burnt a few bushes and almost got Sam too, but his fire could never reach the demon; Andy’s water spurted weakly; Sam knocked himself down with his own wind. Jake, for his part, couldn’t seem to get a good grasp on the earth around him. It felt hard and unyielding, and Jake felt himself weakening so fast that it was like his strength was flowing out of him through a hole in his body. He was used to physical effort but he’d never felt anything like this: his legs trembled, feeling weak and noodle-like, his vision was blurry, and his lungs felt tight and burning. His side, where he’d been hit by the water, ached deeply like it was one giant bruise.

The demon advanced toward them at a leisurely pace, looking pretty confident that he could take them—and, to be fair, they’d given it no reason to think any different. Jake focused on the earth under its feet, hoping that he could make the ground open up like he had before. The effort made prickles of sweat bloom all over his body and his head swam, but all he managed to do was to make the ground shake mildly for a few seconds.

“Shit,” Jake muttered under his breath. “Shit, shit, _shit_.”

“I don’t understand why you still think you can fight me,” the demon said, sounding honestly bemused. The voice was mostly Phoebe’s, with only a faint echo shadowing the words.

Phoebe’s gaunt face suddenly turned away, like the demon’s attention had been caught by something else. Phoebe’s eyebrows moved in an odd, uncoordinated way, like the demon was trying to frown but didn’t have a handle on it.

Jake looked over at his friends, puzzled by the reaction. They were all breathing harshly, soaking wet, their clothes dirty, blackened or torn. If there had ever been a moment for a coordinated attack, then that was it, but what if the demon’s apparent distraction was a trick?

“Should we—” he whispered.

Felix had blood dripping in his eyes but he nodded, his face drawn from pain but his expression fierce, and the others imitated him. “One,” he said in a barely audible voice, “two—"

 _Three_. A flurry of earth, water, fire and air surged at the demon in Phoebe’s body. It actually wasn’t a bad attack, if you compared to what they’d managed before, but, without even looking in their direction, the demon summoned a wall of water and their elements crashed against it. Jake’s vision darkened and without even realizing he’d fallen he found himself on his knees in the dirt, hearing his friends groan next to him. 

_We’re going to die_. The thought was clear, sharp-edged and unbending. The demon was going to use their few seconds of weakness to strike them down and end this once and for all. _Mum, I’m sorry._

A few long heartbeats later, they were still alive. Surprise made Jake open his eyes, which he hadn’t noticed he’d closed, and saw that the demon hadn’t moved, still holding Phoebe’s face away, her eyes vacant. Her features suddenly twisted with anger and the demon yelled, “ _No!_ ” A moment later, Felix’s phone vibrated.

It was such an incongruously innocuous sound that for a moment, none of them remembered what it was supposed to mean. Then Andy said, “The signal!” and as one, they intoned the words that would reverse their binding spell.

“Elements that knit the world, I invoke thee and free you from my word. Earth, water, air and fire, bound and shared together by us all, access my power, give me back control.”

The talisman shone brighter than Jake had ever seen it do, and he felt a gentle warmth suffuse his tired limbs. His head cleared, and his aches and pains, although still there, became a distant bother. He climbed back to his feet and held out a hand, feeling the ground under him as clearly as he could see his surroundings. He clenched a fist and the earth shook.

The demon almost lost its footing, then turned toward them, raw fear and panic on Phoebe’s face. It raised a hand and water rushed at them—Jake had a moment of feeling a flicker of fear at the thought that the demon hadn’t lost all the power he’d stolen from them, even with the spell broken, but then Andy stepped up, holding his hand out, and stopped the water mid-air. The expression on his face was one of incredulous ecstasy, and Jake didn’t have to wonder about it because he could feel it too—the power rushing through his veins like liquid fire, his whole body thrumming with it. He’d rarely felt so alive, so alert, like he’d only been living for this one moment and there was nothing he couldn’t do. He looked over at Sam and Felix and saw the wind that whirled around Sam, the fire that danced between Felix’s hands. He realized also that he could _feel_ their hearts beat with his in his chest, as distinctly as if the organs were actually lodged behind his ribs. 

The demon wasn’t about to back down, though, and sent them three blasts of wind in quick successions, then projectiles made of earth and fire. Sam’s wind shielded them from the attacks, while Felix shot balls of fire at the demon. It dodged them, but it clearly was getting tired, its movement becoming stilted and slow, as if it had trouble keeping control of Phoebe’s body. Jake focused on the earth under Phoebe again and this time the ground quaked and cracked open, forcing the demon to jump aside to avoid falling in one of the cracks. Together, Jake and his friends marched in its direction, sending their elements batter mercilessly at it until all it could do was dodge and counter. Their synchronisation was perfect—they never hindered each other’s movement, never left the demon one moment of respite, and this without looking or speaking to each other. They almost felt like one person, and the sensation was so amazing that Jake couldn’t believe he’d ever felt wary of magic or of their bond. Magic was awesome. _They_ were awesome. 

The demon let out a cry of rage when flames licked Phoebe’s arm and left a red mark on it. Jake saw Felix’s jaw clench, probably feeling guilty that he’d hurt Phoebe, but he cupped his hands and shot them forward, sending another ball of fire at the demon. A thread of Andy’s water coiled around Phoebe’s body before the demon could dodge it, binding Phoebe’s arms against her body. 

“ _You worms!_ ” Phoebe’s lips didn’t move and the voice was so distorted it was hard to understand the words. “ _You don’t deserve those powers. You don’t know how to use them properly_.”

“Seems to me we’re doing pretty well!” Sam boasted. His cheeks were flushed from the effort or from having the wind whip at them.

“The banishment spell,” Felix said tersely. “We should perform it now.”

They’d hoped to avoid having to use it because they weren’t sure what it would do to Phoebe, but if they hurt Phoebe’s body too badly with their elemental attacks it would amount to the same thing. They couldn’t wait any longer. 

“Earth, water, fire, and air,” they started chanting, their voices sounding like one. “Troubles be gone, no more despair. Washed away clean—”

An inhuman roar escaped Phoebe’s lips and her head snapped back. A billow of dark smoke surged out of her mouth, then gathered into a cloud that hovered over their heads. They stopped chanting, watching it warily. Phoebe’s body had crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut off. 

“What’s it doing?” Sam murmured, his eyes on the hovering cloud.

A series of discordant sounds came from the cloud, like the demon was trying to speak but couldn’t muster language now that it’d left Phoebe’s body. Then it darted in direction of the trees, and for a moment Jake and his friends looked at it dumbfounded, wondering what it was doing, until they realized that the demon wasn’t actually aiming for the trees, but for the people who had just came out of the forest: Ellen, Mia and Oscar were there for some mystifying reason, and the demon was rushing toward them.

“It wants to possess one of them!” Andy exclaimed.

That shook them out of their stupor. Simultaneously they cast projectiles of earth, water, fire and air at the flying cloud. Jake and Andy missed their mark entirely, but while Sam and Felix managed to hit the cloud, it only succeeded in slowing it down.

“Ellen!” Felix yelled. “Oscar! You guys have to get out of here! Run!”

As he was saying it he took off running in direction of their friends and the rest of them followed right behind. Felix’s shouting made Ellen look up and she swore loudly at the sight of the stormy cloud coming at her, and then started to throw things at it. Whatever they were, the objects made the cloud stop and quiver for a moment when they hit.

“We have to do the banishment spell again!” Felix shouted.

The cloud was almost on Ellen, Mia and Oscar, and Ellen seemed to have run of things to throw at it. Jake feverishly tried to grasp for the words of the spell in his mind, but gone was the confidence and the all-powerful feeling of earlier. Panic had set its hooks in him again and he couldn’t think straight anymore.

“Earth, water, fire and air,” Felix recited, and Andy joined him on the second word.

“Troubles be gone, no more despair,” Jake said with them.

“Washed away clean, leave me free of evil this day!” They were now talking in unison again. They’d stopped running, but the cloudy demon had stopped in the air too, seemingly frozen, so they said the spell again, their voices getting louder with each word. “Earth, water, fire and air. Troubles be gone, no more despair. Washed away clean, leave me free of evil this day!”

They repeated the spell one more time, then once again, screaming their lungs out like the louder they shouted, the more powerful the magic would be. The sky had darkened and wind whipped at them as the cloud spasmed, emitting a shriek so piercing that they all had to press their hands against their ears, although they didn’t stop chanting the spell. The cloud folded on itself, becoming smaller and smaller until it was reduced to a pinprick of darkness, then it let out a last shrill sound that had them fall to their knees, drowning in agony. Suddenly it was over, the new calm so brutal that it felt like a slap over the head. 

Jake didn’t move for a long moment. The power that had surged through him after the binding spell had broken seemed to have completely drained and he felt weak as a kitten, barely able to hold his head up. He heard the voices of Ellen, Mia and Oscar, vibrating with urgency, but they sounded distant and he couldn’t make out their words. Eventually he hauled himself in a sitting position, holding in his hands a head that felt like it’d swollen a few sizes. He opened his eyes and winced against the sunlight, feeling like someone was trying to ram spikes through his eyes sockets. The sky had cleared and birds were chirping once again as though nothing had happened. Jake looked around and saw that his friends were sitting up too, with Mia kneeling by Sam’s side and Ellen and Oscar gathered at Felix’s.

“I’m fine,” Felix was telling his best friend and his brother. “I’m fine. But Phoebe—”

Felix lurched to his feet and headed toward where Phoebe had fallen. Jake went after him and the others followed. They found Phoebe lying still on the ground, looking so much like a corpse that Jake’s throat tightened. If she was dead, then it meant that they’d killed her. 

Felix dropped to his knees next to her. He reached out with a trembling hand to check her pulse on her neck. “She’s alive,” he said after a few seconds, his shoulders sagging in relief.

“We have to call for an ambulance,” Mia said, and didn’t wait for anyone’s approval before she got her phone. 

The next few hours were a blur. An ambulance came and the paramedics fussed over Phoebe. Jake, Felix, Sam and Andy must have looked terrible, because the paramedics kept insisting that they should come with them too. They managed to fend them off and the ambulance drove away.

When Jake came home, he found his mother and his friends’ parents there, all in a state of frenzied panic. Obviously, Andy’s dad had called the other parents and told them what had happened when the demon had visited Andy. Jake was assailed with a barrage of questions that he had nowhere near enough brain power to answer in a satisfactory manner. His mum noticed his confusion and exhaustion, and came to his rescue, telling the other parents to go find their own kids at home and that they would try to get the whole story later. Then she bullied Jake to bed and it was only once he was lying in his bed, in the relative darkness of his room, that everything that had happened finally sunk in.

They’d made it. They’d chased the demon and had survived, had regained full mastery of their powers and it had felt… Extraordinary. Fighting the restoring demon hadn’t felt anything like this. For the first time since they’d tumbled into the other universe, Jake really felt that his life had changed for good, and that maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. He could sense Andy, Sam and Felix in their respective homes, awake as he was, their steady heartbeats grounding him. He couldn’t remember what it had been like not to be able to feel that.

They fell asleep at the same time, dreaming common dreams of elemental battles. 

\---

When Phoebe heard knocking at the shop’s door, at first she didn’t move to get it. The sign at the door indicated ‘closed’, and if people didn’t know how to read then it wasn’t her problem. The knocking continued and she pursed her mouth in annoyance, debating whether to open the door anyway to give the intruder a piece of her mind. She’d been out of the hospital for a couple of days, but she still felt exhausted all the time, and she found dealing with people taxing on a good day. If she didn’t move, maybe the person at the door would think that she wasn’t there.

“Phoebe!” a voice rose over the knocking. “We know you’re there.”

Phoebe squeezed her eyes shut and cursed under her breath. It was Felix, and he was probably there with the rest of his little coven. Unfortunately for Phoebe’s tranquillity, they were the only people that she owed a face-to-face conversation to. With a grumble she left the book she’d been reading face down on the table—a cheap romance paperback that didn’t have a whiff of magic in it—and made her way into the shop and to the door.

Felix was there with Sam, Jake and Andy, as she’d expected, but there were also two teenage girls and a boy in a wheelchair. The boy was obviously Felix’s brother Oscar, whose accident had triggered Felix’s disastrous spell-casting; one of the girls, who had curly hair, was holding Sam’s hand and was presumably his girlfriend. The other wore dark clothes, dark make-up, and was giving Phoebe a death glare. 

“Hey, Phoebe,” Felix said with a half-smile.

Phoebe sighed. “Come on in.”

The backroom hadn’t contained that many people in a long time and it felt crowded. Phoebe mumbled that she was going to make them tea and retreated to the tiny kitchen next door, trying to collect her thoughts while the water boiled. She’d known that she’d have to explain herself to them eventually—and probably grovel for forgiveness, as much as she didn’t relish the thought. She’d done them ill, and in return they’d saved her life. Some days she’d rather they’d let her die, but most of the time she was grateful. She went back to the backroom and found the kids whispering to each other. They shut up when she came in, and she had to force herself not to comment on it. They had every right to badmouth her.

The ritual of pouring them tea gave her a few more minutes to compose herself. The kids murmured ‘thank you’s, and then Phoebe sat down and looked at them. There wasn’t as much hostility in their expressions as she’d have thought, but when she tried to make the words ‘I’m sorry’ come out, they got blocked in her throat.

“I have a question,” Andy asked, leaning forward. “How did the possession happen? Were you willing? Was it a sudden thing, or—?”

Phoebe felt bile rise up and she swallowed. “I was _not_ willing,” she said. “And the possession happened—” It had happened in increments; she’d started losing time, minutes at first, hours later on, and had felt more and more exhausted until she’d been too weak to resist the demon. “It happened progressively.”

“Did you know what would happened to us?” Sam asked, and while Andy had looked mostly curious, Sam was definitely angry.

“I didn’t,” Phoebe said. “I didn’t know it would hurt you.”

“But you didn’t know it wouldn’t,” said the Goth girl, who had been introduced to Phoebe as ‘Ellen.’

Phoebe clenched her fists under the table. “No, I didn’t,” she said as evenly as she could. 

There was a long, loaded silence after that, during which Phoebe barely dared to breathe. Sam’s girlfriend, Mia, leaned in to murmur something in Sam’s ear that Phoebe couldn’t catch, but which seemed to appease him.

“What I don’t understand,” Felix said, “is why you didn’t simply ask for our help if you wanted to cast a spell. I mean, I assume that you thought the demon would help you find your sister.”

“Yes,” Phoebe said. “And I didn’t ask you because… I know you feel like you know me because of the history you have with my other self, but I don’t know _you_.”

“Oh.” Hurt flashed across the boy’s face, but he recovered quickly. “In the other universe, you asked for my help without really knowing me.”

“Well.” Phoebe had hoped that she wouldn’t have to tell that part, but again, she owed it to them. “When Alice disappeared, her ongoing project was to give me magic powers. We’d always been very close, but… You don’t know how it is, growing up with someone so powerful when you don’t have an ounce of magic in your blood.” Sam snorted derisively and Phoebe hurried to say, “I know it doesn’t justify what I’ve done; I’m not trying to justify it. I just want to explain. So, Alice had been trying to find a way to give me magic for years. She said she wanted to be able to share with me the wonders she experienced through it. And when you showed up with more power that you knew how to handle…”

“Then it was too hard to resist the temptation,” Jake said wryly. 

What if the demon had actually helped her find Alice and she’d been able to show her sister those wonderful elemental powers she’d obtained? She could all too well imagine the look of joy on Alice’s face. The boys hadn’t even seemed to want their powers very much. But she knew it wouldn’t go well if she said that out loud, so instead she focused on uttering the words that she should have told them from the start, “I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Felix said after a moment, then looked over at his friends. Andy nodded, Jake shrugged, and Sam rolled his eyes and sighed. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Apologies accepted. Don’t _ever_ try to steal our powers again.”

“I won’t,” Phoebe said. 

“You know,” Felix said, “we can still help you find Alice. Willingly, this time.”

“Do we, though?” Sam muttered.

“We’ll probably need your help sometimes, too,” Felix went on, ignoring his friend. “We have a lot to learn. If we’re as powerful as you say we are, other things are probably going to want a taste. And Oscar has powers too. He has visions. They can help with Alice.”

“Hey,” Oscar said, wriggling his fingers at Phoebe.

“Okay,” Phoebe said dazedly. She hadn’t thought this conversation would end with them still willing to help. “Of course I’ll help you.”

“Yeah,” Andy said, “can you help me convince my mum and my grand-mother that now that I have powers, it means that I can actually defend myself, not that I need more scrutiny?”

“You’ve told your parents?”

“Well,” Jake said, “we didn’t really have a choice after the demon paid Andy a little visit while his dad was there, and then we all took off to fight you—well, possessed you. After that, they were really insistent that they wanted an explanation, and it was easier just to tell them—and show them—the truth. My mum has handled it pretty well,” he added with a small proud smile. 

The conversation veered on the boys’ parents varied reactions, and Phoebe let herself relax now that the attention wasn’t so completely focused on her. The kids chattered and bickered, sometimes as though she weren’t there, sometimes trying to include her. Mostly she was content to watch and roll her eyes at them. 

As they were leaving, Felix told her, “When are you going to open the magic shop again?”

“I—don’t know.”

“You _have_ to open it again! There’s no other resource for magic in Bremin. I’m not just thinking of us, but there must be other people who need it. Don’t—”

Ellen circled her fingers around his wrist and tugged down on his arm. The intimate way she did it made Phoebe wonder if they were dating—if they were, they were a lot less obvious about it than Sam and Mia. 

“Dial it down, Witchy Wonder,” she said. “Give the woman some time.”

“Sorry,” Felix said sheepishly. “I just—”

“I think we’ve established that I’m not stepping away from magic,” Phoebe said. “At least not until I’ve found Alice. I just don’t want to deal with people right now.”

“Oh.”

Phoebe cleared her throat. “Which means, _shoo_ ,” she said gruffly. “Don’t you kids have havoc to wreck or, I don’t know, homework?”

Felix gave her a crooked smile. “Who even does their homework?” he said.

“I do,” Andy said.

“Shut up, nerd,” Sam said, cuffing him lightly behind the head. 

Phoebe stood in her doorway and watched the kids walk away. Whether they realized it or not, Felix, Sam, Jake and Andy quickly fell into step with each other. For the first time in a very long time, Phoebe found herself hopeful again that with their help, she’d be able to find Alice. She’d probably signed herself up for a future full of teenagers, but it certainly beat a future of wasting away while an otherworldly being occupied her body.

Retreating into her shop, Phoebe allowed herself a smile.


End file.
